One of the century's most notorious mass murderers, Pol Pot, died on Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at 73.

``It's like this, nobody killed or poisoned Pol Pot. Now he is finished. He has no power and no rights any longer,'' Khmer Rouge commander Mok told Associated Press Television (APTV) yesterday.

``He is nothing more than cow dung. Actually cow dung is more useful because it can be used as fertiliser,'' he said.

Mok, a one-legged guerrilla dubbed `the butcher' for his brutality, deposed Pol Pot as the head of the ultra-revolutionary Khmer Rouge movement last year and placed him under house arrest.

Mok now leads the remnants of this once powerful force, hemmed in by Cambodian Government troops and Khmer Rouge defectors in rugged enclaves along the Thai frontier.

The Phnom Penh Government hopes to enticeMok's followers, said to number a few hundred, to defect but has vowed to put him and other top diehard Khmer Rouge leaders before a tribunal.

The United Nations plans to send a special team of investigators to Cambodia as early as July to gather evidence against these leaders, who also include nominal Khmer Rouge chief Khieu Samphan and the sinister, shadowy Nuon Chea.

``I am keen that the momentum not be lost now that (Pol Pot) has died,'' Thomas Hammarberg, the UN special envoy on human rights to Cambodia, was quoted as saying. He said the team, headed by former chief justice of Mauritius Rajsoomer Lallah, will recommend what form a tribunal should take.