first university outside Phnom Penh. In the summer of 1966, Keat Chhuon lead the Cambodian delegation to the summer physics colloquium of the Beijing symposium "paying a glowing tribute to the Chinese people's revolutionary spirit". in 1967, Keat Chhon was named Secretary of State. High ranking official under the Khmer Rouge Chhon feld to Beijing with Prince Sihanouk after he was deposed in March 1970 to head the overseas Khmer Rouge resistance fighting against the US-backed Lon Nol regime, who had bombarded his university in Kampong Cham on April 28, 1970, and massacred many Vietnamese living in Cambodia. He was a close assistant of Prince Sihanouk travelling with him to Hanoi or parts of Cambodia under Khmer Rouge control in 1973. And then, in March 1975, Chhon headed for Cambodia with Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary and seven young intellectuals, during the fall of Phnom Penh. Under the Khmer Rouge regime, he worked under the direction of Ieng Sary in the General Political Department of the Foreign Ministry (B-1), along Thiounn Prasith and other major figures of the regime. Keat Chhon accompanied then-King Norodom Sihanouk on an official visit as figurehead of Democratic Kampuchea to the United Nations secretary-general in October, 1975. He was also accused of being Pol Pot's secretary and adviser by then opposition leader Sam Rainsy. His wife and two children were to be arrested and taken to the S-21 extermination camp—also known as Tuol Sleng—on January 10, 1979, but the Vietnamese forces walking into Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979, and Chhon fled to Beijing with Prince Sihanouk once again. Exile in France and Zaire During a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cuba in September 1979, Chhon had his first contact with future Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was foreign minister of the Phnom Penh government at the time. After spending some time on the Thai border at the Khmer Rouge outpost, Keat Chhon obtained refugee status in France in 1983, where he worked in a small engineering firm. In 1988, he started working with the United Nations for a mission in economic development project in Zaire, where he stayed until 1992. Minister of Economy and Finance since the return of democracy Reopening the Cambodian economy to the world Having met again with Hun Sen in 1987 and 1988 on behalf of Prince Sihanouk, he took part in the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements