Editorial: Bad timing again for Indonesians

Indonesian armed gangs in Timor do not have the best sense of timing. As New Zealanders well remember, the death and destruction visited upon East Timor in the wake of its vote for independence last year came just as world leaders were getting together for the Apec summit in Auckland.

An Australian-led "coalition of the willing" was quickly organised with a United Nations mandate to intervene. Now, nearly a year on, a gang has attacked a UN refugee centre in West Timor, killing three UN staff and an independent aid worker, just as the largest ever gathering of world leaders assembles in New York for the UN's "millennium conference."

The UN's peacekeeping role in the post-Cold War era is one of the big themes of the event. People with a grand sense of history dare to hope that the conference will confirm a new world order as significant as any of the great treaties that ruled international relations in previous centuries.

The new order supposedly will dilute the doctrine of national sovereignty which has for so long restricted the rights of states to interfere in the affairs of others. The trend has begun with interventions in Kosovo and Timor.

Until the incident on Wednesday, Timor might have been regarded as a showpiece for humanitarian intervention. The forces went in, finally, by agreement with the sovereign power, Indonesia, albeit under pressure from the United States.

The pro-Indonesian gangs fled to West Timor, and the occupation was practically bloodless until a New Zealand and a Nepalese soldier were killed in border incidents.

But as long as 100,000 East Timorese remain in refugee camps west of the border, trouble is likely. The attack on the UN centre at Atambua, apparently in response to the killing of a militiaman accused of atrocities in East Timor last year, is an ominous development. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is taking the rest of its 105 staff out of West Timor, and who can blame it? The ferocity of the attack, in which the centre was burned down, three staff stabbed to death, their bodies taken outside and set on fire, leaves no doubts about the danger there.

The UN withdrawal means urgent steps must now taken to ensure the safe return of all who want to go back to East Timor.

At least the timing of the Atambua attack, with the Indonesian President in New York, means Jakarta can be under no illusion that neighbouring countries are losing interest in Timor, or indeed in the stability of Indonesia as a whole.

President Wahid, who came to office after last year's crisis, has not previously felt the weight of international concern at such close quarters. Hopefully that it will compel him to do more to exert authority over his Army's district commanders. If the gangs in West Timor are not armed and actively supported by the Army, as seems probable, the soldiers do nothing to get in their way.

In New York, President Wahid has ordered two more battalions to West Timor and has agreed to work with the UN force in East Timor "to overcome difficulties." If that means refugees can go home unmolested and the border becomes patrolled by professional soldiers on both sides, there is a chance that East Timorese can get on with building their state, and Indonesia would have one fewer headache in its effort to hold itself together.

In the meantime, there is no end in sight to the mission New Zealand forces have joined. The rescue of 53 foreign workers after the attack at Atambua was a new dimension of the engagement, involving an operation inside Indonesian territory.

The 30-odd New Zealand troops and three RNZAF Iroquois involved in the evacuation have come through unscathed. That is a relief, but this could be just the first such operation if the plight of refugees becomes more desperate with the departure of their UN shield.

In New York, the conference began with an unscheduled minute's silence for those killed at Atambua. It might have been a reminder to all those assembled that peacekeeping is never without risk and never to be taken on lightly in a new world order.

War might now be more likely within states than between them, but those who intercede will need to be well equipped and tread carefully.

Herald Online feature: the Timor mission

UN Transitional Administration in E Timor