Militia threats grow in West Timor

2:00 PM

JAKARTA - Violent pro-Jakarta militias have stepped up their campaign of terror in Indonesian West Timor, scaring off local aid workers trying to feed 120,000 East Timorese refugees languishing in border camps.

Jakarta has promised much but done little to curb the militias, who last week killed three U.N. international staff and several local residents in West Timor, forcing all foreign aid workers to flee and raising fears refugees may starve.

Despite international outrage over the murders and Jakarta's failure to deal with the militias, the government has declared it would refuse to meet a U.N. Security Council team due in Jakarta next week to take Indonesia to task over the slaughter.

But Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri will lead senior officials in high level talks with leaders from East Timorese independence groups and the U.N.'s administration there in Bali Thursday. No further details were available.

"Until now, we have not given the refugees any additional supplies because we just can't go to the camps. Our men are afraid to go there," Petrus Ribero, head of the Indonesian Red Cross office in the West Timor capital Kupang, told Reuters.

"The militias hound us whenever my men are there so we can't take the risk."

The militias herded the refugees across the border from East Timor when the territory voted last year to end 23 years of harsh Indonesian military rule, and have been blocking their return.

Ribero said refugees only had food to the end of the month.

"I fear this will trigger something," he said.

The United Nations has already warned refugees were running out of food. The Indonesian Red Cross usually coordinates local relief efforts for any emergency in the country.

Indonesia Wednesday promised to send food to the refugees, now totally at the mercy of militias largely trained and armed by Indonesia's military to intimidate East Timorese from voting for independence in last year's U.N.-supervised ballot.

The U.N. Security Council last week unanimously condemned the killings and said it would send a team to Jakarta to convey a message to Jakarta to disband the militias.

Defense Secretary William Cohen is likely to carry the same message when he visits Jakarta from next Sunday.

Separately, Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab said chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would meet Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York next week to explain Indonesia's efforts to resolve the West Timor violence.

But a defiant Indonesia said it rejected the U.N. mission and wanted to settle the militia problem itself.

"We are not totally rejecting it, but we think the time is not right," Shihab told SCTV television. "We will invite them to see our performance after we have put in our own efforts.

"So they will not come to investigate but to observe what we have done. Our objection is this can give a negative image to the Indonesian government, as if to show we cannot handle our on problems and need help from other countries."

Shihab said such a mission might give further ammunition to the political enemies of President Abdurrahman Wahid, who has his hands full trying to resolve a range of economic and political woes hobbling the world's fourth most populous nation.

It could also backfire on the U.N., Shihab added.
"If there is an image we are being pressured from outside it will give a negative message to the public which is already resentful of the U.N. This will add to the vengeance against U.N. people in Indonesia. This is not what we want," he said.

Nationalist hackles have stirred in response to foreign outrage over the killing of the three foreign workers with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Atambua.

Indonesia's military, which has been handed most of the blame for failing to curb the militias, strongly resists any suggestion of foreign interference.

It was humiliated last year when a multinational force was eventually sent into East Timor to quell the pro-Jakarta militias who, with support from the Indonesian military, went on a violent rampage in September 1999 after an August 30 independence vote. As the diplomatic wrangle continues, words of bitterness echoed through East Timor's Dili Cathedral Wednesday as hundreds mourned the three U.N. workers butchered by the militias in the West Timor town of Atambua a week ago today.

Poster-sized photographs of the three stood at the foot of the altar, where the U.N. head of mission for East Timor Sergio Vieira de Mello delivered an eulogy and asked how Indonesian authorities could allow such violence.

"One week ago in a premeditated, I repeat premeditated militia operation, they were murdered and their bodies burned beyond recognition," Vieira de Mello said.

"We don't know how this could be allowed to happen."

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: the Timor mission

UN Transitional Administration in E Timor