The end of Indonesian dictator Suharto’s 32-year regime has revitalised U.S. efforts to put pressure on Jakarta for its occupation of East Timor, with the U.S. Congress now considering self-determination for the island state.

Two Democratic senators, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, this week started to pick up support for a Senate resolution calling on President Bill Clinton to “work actively, through the United Nations and with U.S. allies, to…support an internationally-supervised referendum on self- determination.”

A concurrent resolution in the House of Representatives, submitted by Democrat Nita Lowey of New York, also calls on Washington to support a referendum for East Timor. The Lowey bill, co-sponsored by 46 repesentatives, also recognises “the need for direct Timorese participation in the U.N.-sponsored tripartite talks” which currently involve the Portuguese and Indonesian governments. (Portugal was East Timor’s colonial power until 1975, when Indonesia invaded as Timorese parties were fighting for independence.)

Both the Senate and House resolutions face uphill battles to win acceptance from the Republican majorities in each house. However, this month’s violence in Indonesia – which contributed to the resignation last week of Suharto and his replacement by new President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie – has at least put the spotlight on rights in East Timor anew.

“No-one realy knows what to expect during the unfolding political drama of Indonesia,” Feingold argued. “What particularly worries me now, given this larger political crisis, are reports of increasing numbers of troops in some of East Timor’s major cities. This is extremely destabilising, coming on the heels of a dire humanitarian situation on that captive island because of poor access to food.”

At the same time, Feingold acknowledged, the crisis in Jakarta could also “present us with an opportunity once and for all to help the people of East Timor exercise their right to self- determination.”

Even before Suharto’s regime collapsed, Feingold noted, Clinton, “who has not engaged on this issue in the past, expressed interest in the idea of a U.N.-sponsored self- determination referendum in a December 1996 letter to me.”

The senator, who has pushed for an end to all U.S. military training activity and arms supplies to Indonesia, said that Habibie or any successor would eventually have to re-evaluate the Indonesian relationship with East Timor and might decide that the 23-year occupation is “entirely unsustainable”.

However, in the short term, the Indonesian military seems unlikely to reduce its grip on East Timor, argued Edward Herman, professor of finance at Pennsylvania University’s Wharton School.

“The army is still strong, and the West still wants ‘stability’ on something like the old terms (under Suharto),” Herman argued. As a result, if Jakarta wants to hold on to East Timor and its valuable oil reserves, he added, it still has the military might and international support to do so.

In recent days, the signs that East Timor’s situation could improve after Suharto’s fall have dimmed slightly. Although Habibie set free two of Indonesia’s main political prisoners, Mukhtar Pakpahan and Sri Bintang Pamungkas, and hinted at a larger amnesty affecting hundreds of other prisoners, few expect any Timorese – let alone jailed pro-independence leader Xanana Gusmao – to be included.

“The Timorese are in a different category, since they aren’t perceived as political prisoners but are accused of criminal activity,” said John Miller, spokesman for the U.S.-based East Timor Action Network (ETAN). Significantly, there has been no indication, even during the current thaw, that Gusmao – despite the international attention focused on his imprisonment – will be released soon, Miller said.

Nor is there much pressure coming from the Indonesians whose protests led to Suharto’s resignation to reconsider the question of East Timor. Although some of the students protesting Suharto’s regime sided with the Timorese cause, many Indonesians still accept the government’s stance on maintaining its grip over all of the archipelago’s trouble spots – from East Timor, annexed in 1976, to breakaway islands like Irian Jaya and Aceh.

Even pro-democracy leaders like Amien Rais, head of the influential Islamist organisation Muhammadiyah, have been largely unsympathetic to Timor’s plight, despite the massacres of more than 200,000 people – or a third of the original population – there since 1975.

During riots in East Timor in 1995, Rais called on Indonesian Muslims to defend mosques from “desecration” by the largely Catholic Timorese population, said Sidney Jones, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Asia.