By Mark Dodd
The Australian
FORMER foreign minister Andrew Peacock's resignation from the Fraser government in 1981 was triggered by the revelation that Australian sailors Ronald Dean and David Scott had been tortured to death by the Khmer Rouge.
Already angry he had been forced by Malcolm Fraser to recognise the Khmer Rouge regime, Mr Peacock's anger boiled over on a flight to New Delhi when he showed the prime minister a report of an investigation he had commissioned after the fall of Pol Pot in 1979.
En route to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Mr Peacock said the report from Australian officials he had sent to Cambodia to investigate the deaths of Scott and Dean was the final straw, after years of growing tension over Mr Fraser's interference in his portfolio.
"I was so angry about that. Our primary duty was to our own bloody citizens and when these bastards treated them the way they did and we had the increasing evidence about the behaviour of Pol Pot -- all I wanted to do was withdraw the recognition that had been granted to them as the deepest form of protest," Mr Peacock said in Sydney yesterday.
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