Indonesia to close West Timor refugee camps

JAKARTA - Indonesia has said that West Timor refugees camps would be closed within six months and vowed to stop pro-integration militias from raiding East Timor from the camps.

"The actual timeframe is three to six months," Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab said of its plan to close the camps.

More than 130,000 East Timorese who fled their homeland during a bloody rampage by the pro-Jakarta militias after last year's independence vote still live in squalid conditions on the western side of the dangerous Timor border.

Two United Nations peacekeepers have been killed in recent weeks in clashes with suspected militiamen inside East Timor.

Indonesia has come under mounting pressure to close the camps and rein in the militiamen.

"We are confiscating weapons, but they are hiding those weapons, even last week we found some weapons buried... so we are trying," Shihab said of the militias.

Up to quarter of East Timor's 800,000 population fled the territory after the U.N.-organized vote to end Indonesian rule last August.

The bloodshed led to a U.N.-mandated international force moving in to restore peace in East Timor. This was replaced by a formal U.N. peacekeeping force earlier this year.

The head of U.N. peacekeeping mission has demanded Indonesia arrest and disarm militia leaders.

Shihab also repeated Jakarta's earlier appeal for international help to resettle the refugees or send them home.

"Frankly speaking, we have financial problems and up until now we do not get enough funding from the international community," he added.

- REUTERS

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UN Transitional Administration in E Timor