With his small build and the same round face, soft eyes and thinning hair as his father, Prince Norodom Ranariddh looks more and more like the King as he ages.

And there was a time, not long ago, when King Norodom Sihanouk cherished the image of son assuming the throne after his death. he still want this. But his son, he says, may be too much the politician.

As recently as last month, in a private meeting with friends, the King said he now questions Prince Ranariddh's viability as his successor. He said he would have preferred that the prince leave politics for a few years, to make himself more attractive for the throne.

"Ranariddh doesn't fit," say a Western political observer. "He's been a modern politician who has make enemies, who has political debts that have to be paid and political favors that have been dispensed. People would still see him as a politician. He wouldn't get the same respect. It would weaken the institution."

Of course, the King doesn't choose his successor, and neither do the people. if the process remains as it is today. Hun Sen's CPP will make the selection.

The question, then, is whether Hun Sen gains more by leaving Ranariddh in politics or putting him on the throne.

"Hun Sen would like to see Ranariddh there because under the Constitution, Ranariddh cannot get his finger too much in the political pie," says a former adviser to Prince Ranariddh. "He'd be more than happy to have happy to have Ranariddh in a place where he can keep an eye on him, although he wouldn't like having to prostrate himself every time he saw him. But everyone in Cambodia makes compromises."

Prince Ranariddh, 55, a former university professor in France, only came into politics in 1983 when his father asked him to reorganize his resistance army and the Funcinpec party.

Though Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen once served together as prime ministers, the two have been more enemies than colleagues. Tension between them exploded into fighting in July 1997 and Ranariddh fled the country. A years later he was convicted in absentia of illegally importing weapons and colluding with the Khmer Rouge to overthrow the government, though he was later granted amnesty.

In the past year the prince has been les out-spoken in his opposition to Hun Sen's gornment. But based on his past comments, he may not be what Hun Sen is looking for in a king.

Asked about his father's reign during a 1997 interview with The Cambodia Daily, Prince Ranariddh said: "I simply and respectfully believe the King should do what the Constitution of this country allows him to do." But, in his next sentence, Prince Ranariddh summed up King Sihanouk's problems-and, presumably, his own were he to succeed his father.

"[The King's] position is quite difficult, between the Constitution on one hand, and we have to deal with a man like Hun Sen on the other hand," he said.

It would be difficult for Prince Ranariddh not to interfere in daily politics, says a Cambodian political analyst with ties to the three main parties. "But Prince Ranariddh is very intelligent. He knows where the power is. If surviving means shutting up, he will shut up."

And despite their disagreements during the 1990s, the analyst says, Hun Sen could be happy with Prince Ranariddh in the Royal Palace. "Hun Sen knows him very well, how to negotiate with him, where the weak points are," the analyst says. "With anyone else you have to start form scratch. With Ranariddh, you know what he's like.

By Cambodia Dail