War zone awaits Victor Company

By Greg Ansley

With our troops

DARWIN - New Zealand troops began training in earnest yesterday for deployment to East Timor, where a guerrilla war looks increasingly possible.

More than 200 soldiers of Victor Company and supporting units are conducting tactical and live-weapons exercises at Robertson Barracks, just outside Darwin, with the first two of at least 15 armoured personnel carriers already flown in by the RNZAF's transtasman air bridge.

At a briefing for Victor Company yesterday, Major John Knight, one of the New Zealand military liaison officers with the United Nations who was forced to leave Timor at the height of the militia and Indonesian Army violence, warned the troops that they faced significant risks.

"There is a need to be sharp at all times.

"There is a threat, a real threat - this not a walk down Queen St."

Major Howard, a veteran of Bosnia, Bougainville and Angola, said he was expecting to establish Victor Company in a hostile environment, stripped of all basic services and supplies by the militias' scorched-earth policy.

"Just living there is going to be a battle."

But he expressed confidence in his men and equipment, and in the rules of engagement that determine how peacemakers might respond to violence and attacks against them.

"I am confident that with them we can do the job," he said.

"They are definitely robust."

Meanwhile, the buildup of the New Zealand expeditionary force continues, with about 30 more members of the company group to arrive soon, the remaining armour and four-wheel-drive vehicles being readied for transport by sea, and the two RNZAF Hercules on the Timor troop shuttle diverted to the round-the-clock transtasman air bridge.

Victor Company is expected to operate initially with Australia's paratroop battalion, although it may later be expanded to an independent New Zealand battalion group consisting of about 700 soldiers.