In return, he told a rare meeting with journalists at his jungle headquarters, he would end much of the guerrilla war that still plagues Cambodia and work to isolate his former Khmer Rouge comrades and partners in genocide, among them the infamous Pol Pot.
After more than 30 years of civil war, Cambodians are so tired of fighting that they appear willing to forgo retribution for the guilty in return for peace.
When Ieng Sary announced his group's break from the Khmer Rouge last month and called for an end to the fighting, it was reported that government representatives had offered protection and forgiveness to those who followed him.
Though Khmer Rouge troops are confined to remote areas and do not pose a threat to the government, ending the fighting is an important task for Cambodia's coalition government if it is to engineer an economic recovery after decades of strife.
Such a deal would also be of immense financial benefit to the cash-strapped Cambodian government.
Former Khmer Rouge fighters and villages under Ieng Sary's leadership, now calling themselves the Democratic National Union Movement, control huge gem mines and vast tracts of timber, which they sell clandestinely to Thai traders.
The government would like part of this revenue and could do with the savings on defence spending, which accounts for 60 per cent of total state expenditure.
Under the proposed terms of a peace agreement, Cambodia's two prime ministers and national assembly will ask King Norodom Sihanouk to grant amnesty to Ieng Sary.
When such a move was first floated recently, King Sihanouk said he would grant amnesty despite severe personal reservations.
There is even speculation that Ieng Sary will be given a position in the current coalition government and it is almost certain that, if a peace agreement is reached, his movement will become a political party and contest the 1998 election. Ieng Sary is trying to make the amnesty idea more palatable by denying he had anything to do with the Khmer Rouge's mass killings.
Despite the fact that he was deputy prime minister in the Khmer Rouge regime and despite growing documentary evidence being unearthed in Phnom Penh that Khmer Rouge decisions were taken by consensus, Ieng Sary said Pol Pot was the sole architect of the genocide.
Everyone else was just being forced to follow orders of the intolerant madman.
Those sceptical of this claim will invariably point to Ieng Sary's repeated statements on Monday that he felt absolutely no remorse for the suffering inflicted by the Khmer Rouge.
Asked when Pol Pot started to make mistakes, Ieng Sary said it was in 1979
