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PHNOM PENH, Jan. 2

The Cambodian Information Ministry has reversed its earlier decision to impose a suspension on the Cambodia Daily, an English-language newspaper, over its description of a national holiday, its publisher said Wednesday.

Bernard Krisher told Kyodo News the government earlier announced it would suspend the paper for 15 days over its description of Jan. 7 as 'Vietnamese Liberation Day' in a Nov. 28 article. The current official description of the holiday, which falls on the day in 1979 when Vietnamese forces drove the Khmer Rouge from power in Phnom Penh, is the 'Day of Victory over the Genocidal Regime.'

The official view is that Vietnamese forces contributed to a Cambodian insurgent front's own efforts to oust the Khmer Rouge.

The Information Ministry had sent a letter to the paper saying the government 'has clearly declared Jan. 7 as the victory day for Cambodian people over the genocidal regime.'

Krisher, a Tokyo-based American journalist and philanthropist who founded the daily, said the reporter who wrote the article had mistakenly taken the name of the holiday from an outdated government document from early 1991.

The issue is a sensitive one as some Cambodians continue to view Jan. 9 as the beginning of a decade-long Vietnamese occupation.

Krisher, who covered Cambodia in the 1960s for Newsweek magazine, said he was pleased that the ministry recognized the importance of maintaining government policy of supporting a free press.

The Cambodia Daily is an independent nonprofit newspaper published six days a week in Phnom Penh with the aim of establishing a foundation for a free press in Cambodia and to train its journalists.

Krisher said he hopes that within 10 years Cambodians will run the English daily by themselves.