PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia on Tuesday quietly marked the 10-year anniversary of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's death, amid fears that time is running out to try his aging surviving cadre before a genocide tribunal.

Pol Pot, the tyrant who turned Cambodia into the killing fields in the late 1970s, died on April 15, 1998, reportedly from heart attack, in the remote northern Cambodian outpost of Anlong Veng, the Khmer Rouge's final stronghold.

He was unceremoniously cremated under a pile of rubbish and tires.

"Pol Pot died a criminal, responsible for millions of lives," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities. "He is not the kind of person Cambodian people should commemorate."

Nhem En, deputy governor of Anlong Veng and a former Khmer Rouge member, told AFP by telephone: "It is the 10-year anniversary of Pol Pot's death, but there is no commemoration for his soul."

Up to two million people died of overwork and starvation or were executed under the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, property rights, currency and schools.

Millions more were driven from the cities onto vast collective farms as Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist regime sought to create an agrarian utopia.

"Pol Pot is a person the world hates," said Nhem En, a former photographer at the Khmer Rouge's notorious Tuol Sleng torture center in Phnom Penh.

A joint Cambodia-UN tribunal convened in 2006 after nearly a decade of haggling has experienced delays and a funding crisis, raising concerns that the defendants could die before standing trial for their alleged role in one of the 20th century's worst atrocities.

As tribunal officials try to pull together the additional $114 million needed to finish the process, many of the five defendants detained by the court complain of weakening health.

One of them, 82-year-old Ieng Sary, has been repeatedly hospitalized.

"If one of them dies (without standing trial), it is a failure for the court and is not acceptable," said Youk Chhang. "The justice that we wanted from Pol Pot died along with him."

Public trials of the regime's five top leaders are expected to begin later this year.

Originally budgeted at $56.3 million over three years, the tribunal has raised its cost estimates to $170 million, which would allow the court to continue operating until 2011.

Court officials travelled to the United Nations in New York in March to seek $114 million, but so far only Australia has come through, promising $450,000 more for the cash-strapped court.

International backers appear hesitant to pledge more money to the process amid allegations of mismanagement and political interference.