By Ek Madra
Under the new proposal, the long-awaited tribunal's three-year lifespan would grow by two years, dragging out proceedings until 2011 even though most of the Khmer Rouge's leading cadres are old and in poor health.
"We have no choice but to expand," court spokesman Peter Foster told Reuters shortly after the start of a bail hearing for "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, charged last year with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease or starvation under Pol Pot's 1975-79 reign of terror as his dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia descended into the nightmare of the "Killing Fields".
SURPRISE
One Phnom Penh-based diplomat said the request for more money had been in the pipeline for some time, but the size of the increase was a surprise.
Foster said he hoped countries such as Japan, which has bankrolled much of the proceedings so far, would dig deep to ensure the court achieved the aim of prosecuting "those most responsible" for the atrocities without compromising standards.
Tokyo hopes the trials will expose the full extent of the links between Pol Pot's murderous regime and China, analysts say.
At his bail hearing, the octogenarian Nuon Chea argued he was not a flight risk and would not try to influence potential witnesses. Fears for his safety were also overblown, he said.
The court is not expected to announce its decision for several days, but he is extremely unlikely to be released.
Besides Nuon Chea, members of his inner circle now in custody are former president Khieu Samphan, former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, and Duch, head of Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng, or "S-21" interrogation and torture centre.
