Danger lurks in west

By Greg Ansley

DILI - East Timor was still burning yesterday.

Between the ruined town of Maliana, close to the border with Indonesian Timor, along the central mountain spine to Dili, smoke from about a dozen fires drifted up from gullies and ridges.

From the Australian Army Blackhawk helicopter it was not possible to tell what had been fired, nor who was responsible.

But the western regions of East Timor are considered the most dangerous on the island, with only part of the northwestern regency of Bobanaro controlled at present by Australian troops.

Although no militiamen have been seen since a handful fled when the Interfet peacemakers landed by air and sea late last week, reports continue of their presence and of a guerrilla army forming across the border.

Yesterday the Interfet chief of staff, Colonel Mark Kelly, said negotiations would begin soon with the Indonesian Army in a bid to enlist its help in disarming the militias.

Colonel Kelly also was given assurances at an urgent meeting with Falintil leaders on Monday that fighters of the guerrilla army that fought Indonesia for 24 years will not carry arms outside their cantonment areas.

The agreement defused a potentially dangerous confrontation between armed Falintil fighters and Australian soldiers several days ago, and warnings by East Timorese leader Jose Ramos-Horta that his people would not accept the disarming by Interfet.

In a political spat yesterday Ramos-Horta rounded on former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating saying he was sickened by Keating's accusation that John Howard was to blame for the bloodshed in East Timor. Ramos- Horta said Keating had never stood up for the East Timorese when he was leader.

Keating accused the Prime Minister of causing the strife when he wrote to Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie in February urging a ballot on self-determination.

Yesterday conditions in much of East Timor remained uncertain, with up to 500,000 people still missing from a total population of 850,000, and rising concerns that many may perish in the hills if they do not emerge from hiding before the rains start next month.

"It is a source of growing anger," said Michel Barton, of the office for the Coordination of Humanity Affairs. "Where are the people?"

Few were in evidence yesterday as two Australian Blackhawk helicopters, armed with door-mounted 7.62mm machine guns, patrolled down to the town of Batugade, 3km from the western border, across to Balibo and Maliana, up the centre of the island to Dili.

A body floated in the sea of Batugade, and three people, one a woman in a bright red top, walked along what had once been the main street of the town.

Near Maliana about 20 others walked along a road into an otherwise deserted town, and about a dozen people gathered in a farmyard in the hills.

Otherwise there were only isolated groups of three or four in a region dotted with towns and villages.

There have been some encouraging signs.

In Dili yesterday a mass food distribution handed out 12,874 bags of rice, which, averaging five per family, meant at least 64,370 people have returned to the city.

OCHA also reported that an estimated 30,000 people had been seen on Monday in the coastal city of Liquica, west of Dili, where there is sufficient water but severe shortages of food, shelter and medicines.

The country in which hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be still in hiding is harsh, with patches of tropical cover separated by expanses of parched and eroded hillsides, steep gullies and sharp escarpments.

The wide, grey gravel river beds that lace the island are empty of water.

Except for a few that run along the high ridges, the towns of the northwest have been razed systematically, street by street, house by house.

Those that have not been burned have been stripped of their roofs or smashed by hand.

Terraced gardens were uncultivated. Oxen and cattle grazed rice paddies that should be under the plough by this time.

For the moment at least, the west remains the land of the damned.