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PHNOM PENH, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Cambodia said on Sunday it was keeping the door open for U.N. participation in a Khmer Rouge trial after the world body pulled out of talks on a special court to try leaders blamed for 1.7 million deaths in the 1970s.

Chief of Cabinet Sok An, the head of the Cambodian negotiating team with the United Nations, told Reuters the Cambodian government "regretted" the U.N. decision announced on Friday.

"The Cambodian government is keeping its door open for further negotiations. We have not closed the door like Mr Corell did."

Hans Corell, the chief U.N. legal counsel, said on Friday the world body was ending talks with Cambodia on seting up the special court after concluding that, as currently envisaged by Phnom Penh, it could not guarantee its impartiality.

Diplomats said they were shocked by the announcement and Corell drew a barrage of criticism from all sides, including Cambodian politicians, the United States, and rights activists.

They urged the U.N. to reconsider as international involvement was crucial to the global credibility of a trial.

Interior Minister Sar Kheng told Reuters on Saturday the government would pursue its own plans for a trial without the United Nations.

"The Cambodian position is that we will put the Khmer Rouge on trial," he said, without saying when this would happen. "The United Nations pull-out is their problem."

Sok An declined to comment on Sar Kheng's remarks.

Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said on Saturday it was unclear if Corell had consulted U.N. member countries. He said without the U.N., Cambodia had two options -- to hold a trial alone or with help from individual countries, but it wanted it held before general elections in 2003.

WASHINGTON "EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED"

The U.S. ambassador to Cambodia Kent Wiedemann said Washington was "extremely disappointed" by the U.N. decision. He said a trial was crucial not just for Cambodians but to ensure crimes against humanity were not repeated elsewhere.

Some 1.7 million people died of execution, starvation, overwork and disease during the catastrophic Khmer Rouge revolution in the 1970s, but none of its leaders has ever been punished for the crimes of that period.

Some analysts said the U.N. had fallen into a trap laid by the government.

Premier Hun Sen, a former junior Khmer Rouge commander, who once called the U.N. "germs", has always appeared reluctant about its participation. Some believe he does not want a trial.

He said last year he expected 10 top Khmer Rouge leaders to be tried, but the U.N. did not want to be bound by a limit.

One of the main sticking points has been former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, who was pardoned by constitutional monarch King Norodom Sihanouk after his defection in 1996, and the government's insistence that he should not be tried.

Only two high-profile Khmer Rouge figures are in detention -- Kaing Kek Ieu, better know as "Duch", who ran the group's main torture centre and one-legged military commander Ta Mok.

But a judged warned on Saturday they would have to released soon unless the law was changed to extend their three-year detention.

The surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders currently live in quiet retirement in an enclave on Cambodia's western border with Thailand. Former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, the main local body investigating Khmer Rouge crimes, called it a failure by the United Nations and a betrayal of Khmer Rouge victims.

"This should be about justice for those who died, not politics," he said. 

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