Cambodian PM regrets death of Khmer typewriter keyboard inventor

PHNOM PENH, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen expressed his deep regret here on Monday over the death of Keng Vannsak, inventor of the Khmer typewriter keyboard.

Vannsak just died at 83 years old of pneumonia in a hospital at the outskirts of Paris, where he had lived since the 1970s. His funeral will be held there on Tuesday.

"I was so regretful that we lost a famous intellectual of our country," Hun Sen told the graduation ceremony of a university.

"Grandfather Keng Vannsak told me in a recent letter that he had the plan to visit Cambodia," he said, adding that he had never returned to Cambodia since the 1970s.

Vannsak invented the Khmer typewriter keyboard in 1952 and was also known as a politician, Khmer-language teacher and scholar, poet, composer and historian.