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, but its size 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.
The expanded budget would be mainly for more court staff, and translation and transcription as well as victim and witness support, Foster said. It also suggests prosecutors might widen their net well beyond the five already in custody.
"I have no desire to leave my beloved country," he told a courtroom packed with reporters.
The court is not expected to announce its decision for several days, but he is extremely unlikely to be released.
Besides Nuon Chea, top cadres 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.