Cambodians Long for Thai Camps : Refugees: Fighting between the army and Khmer Rouge has made some who waited years to be repatriated think with nostalgia of their former safe havens.

SANG RANG, Cambodia — Fighting between the army and Khmer Rouge has made some Cambodians who waited years to return home think with nostalgia of their former refugee camps in Thailand.

Chan Sein, a single mother of four, says she feels vulnerable under the sheet of blue plastic, held up by tree branches, that has been the family refuge since artillery fire demolished her parents’ home in December.

It is in a sea of plastic and straw shelters along a road at Sang Rang, nearly 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, the capital.

U.N. officials estimate that 10,000 Cambodians, 900 of them returned refugees, were forced to evacuate the area in and around nearby Bavel in December.

Chan and her family fled with half a sack of rice, a cow, cooking pots, clothes and the sheet of plastic, settling along the road with other evacuees. She said she could hear at least 20 shell explosions a day from Bavel and had begun to yearn for the dismal Site 8 refugee camp where she spent eight years.

“I did not expect there to be any fighting here,” she said while breast-feeding her baby under a burning midday sun. “I was told the four factions had agreed on a peace plan.”

But Annick Roulet, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said all 375,000 Cambodian refugees in Thailand were told of the instability and had clamored to get out of the camps nonetheless.

Cambodia’s four factions--the Vietnamese-backed government and three rebel groups--signed a peace plan in October, 1991, to end 13 years of war. It authorizes U.N. peacekeepers to stabilize the country so elections can be held by May, but the radical Khmer Rouge has refused to cooperate.

At the beginning of this year, government soldiers conducted their biggest offensive in northwestern Cambodia since the peacekeeping operation began in March, 1992. U.N. officials said the troops had forced an undetermined number of returned refugees to carry their ammunition and help fight the Khmer Rouge.

Despite the conditions, repatriation is considered one of the most successful parts of the U.N. effort, with 280,000 refugees returned in about 10 months.

Roulet said most were in safe parts of the country, reunited with relatives. She said it was normal for those in Bavel, the only place where refugees had been displaced by fighting, to think back to the Thai camps.

“It was safer in Thailand than here because there was no fighting in the camp,” Chan said, and if the U.N. agency would take her family back there, “I would like to go.”

Similar feelings were expressed by some of the 1,600 refugees living in Yei Ath, a village controlled by the Khmer Rouge about 25 miles away.

Chuon Touch, 24, said he moved to Yei Ath because the Khmer Rouge offered each refugee family five acres of farmland. The village has become a buffer between the army and Khmer Rouge fighters, however, and rumors of imminent shelling are common.

“It’s not safe here,” said Chuon, who was sawing wood to build his house. “The soldiers are fighting every day in this area.”

“I thought the U.N. had established peace in Cambodia, so I agreed to leave the camp. I am angry because there is still fighting in Cambodia.”