RIGHTS-EAST TIMOR: Annan Proposes Lengthy UN Administration

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 1999 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Tuesday urged the 15-nation Security Council to accept an ambitious plan for the United Nations temporarily to administer East Timor.

The proposed mission, the UN Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET), would last for two to three years and involve nearly 9,000 troops being deployed in the territory along with 200 military observers, Ann said.

He insisted that quick approval of the force was necessary at a time when an estimated 500,000 of East Timor’s 850,000 people had been displaced by violence from pro-Indonesia militias and some Indonesian security forces.

“The civil administration is no longer functioning,” Annan wrote in his report to the Security Council. “The judiciary and court systems have ceased to exist; electrical services, such as water and electricity, are in real danger of collapse.”

The violence which followed the Aug. 30 self-determination ballot in East Timor was so severe that hardly any buildings were left undamaged in the capital, Dili, while the towns of Ainaro and Cassa were “completely destroyed.” Wide areas of other town, like Atsabe and Maliana, had been destroyed by fire, according to the report.

Before UNTAET was deployed, the United Nations must deploy 460 police officers, as well as legal experts and civil affairs officers, throughout the country to handle urgent security and administrative concerns, Annan said.

By the end of this month, some 8,000 troops led by Australia were expected to be deployed in East Timor, as part of the multinational Intervention Force for East Timor, or Interfet.

Indonesia, which invaded East Timor in 1975, has reduced its troop presence to a token force of some 1,200 soldiers.

Approval of the UN’s [peace-keeping plans was unlikely to occur until the end of this month, since the United Nations was forced to wait for the Indonesian legislature to accept the results of the vote in which 78.5 percent of East Timorese voters opted for independence from Indonesia.

Also the US Senate had 15 days to consult before Washington could support any UN peacekeeping operations – a delay which could push back a Council vote until late October.

However, Bernard Miyet, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, said Tuesday that Annan had urged the Council to approve UNTAET as soon as possible, so that the UN troops could replace Interfet quickly without any security vacuum in East Timor.

“We are already preparing the transition,” he said. “We want a seamless transition…in which there is no gap between the end of Interfet and the beginning of UN administration.”

Miyet estimated that it would take between two and four months to deploy UNTAET, but said he was confident that countries would be willing to lend troops. Some soldiers and equipment, he added, could be donated by Australia and other Interfet forces.

In the meantime, he added, some 180 UN police are ready for deployment in the East Timorese capital, Dili, and nearby in Darwin, Australia.

Many Asian countries have offered to participate in the UN force and Australia – which currently had some 4,500 troops in East Timor – was expected to decrease its own participation as Asian troops arrived, observers opined.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer confirmed last week that Canberra was prepared to scale back its contribution once the UN peacekeeping force was established.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad argued that a more Asian force was preferable, although he cautioned that Malaysia and other cash-strapped nations could not afford a long-term deployment.

The UN force would be paid for by a standard assessment among member states, in which the United States pays for 31 percent of peacekeeping costs and European countries account for a heavy share of the funding. But Miyet noted that the United Nations alsowas relying on a trust fund to help rebuild East Timor’s shattered infrastructure.

Japan has contributed 100 million dollars to the trust fund, while Portugal – East Timor’s former colonial power – gave five million dollars.

Miyet argued that the new operation may be more costly and logistically challenging that other recent missions, such as the UN administration in Kosovo, because of the amount of destruction that was wreaked in recent weeks.

“Right now, we have a situation in which everything has been burned, looted – all our capacity has been destroyed,” Miyet said.

Yet the United Nations also has some advantages in the upcoming mission, including the support of the Timorese and the pro- independence movement, the National Council for Timorese Resistance.

The mission would be one of the most massive undertaken by the United Nations.

Annan wrote that the world body would establish an “effective administration”, help develop a constitution for East Timor and organise elections and build institutions for the territory’s independence. The entire process was expected to last two to three years.

It would include providing advisors on civil administration, legal and judicial affairs, policing and other key functions.

Miyet added that the amount of future work would depend on how many trained professionals remained in East Timor – a territory which for the past 23 years has relied on civil structures provided by Indonesia.

Even now, hundreds of thousands of East Timorese were camped as refugees in parts of Indonesia, with as many as 230,000 refugees estimated to have been forcibly deported to Indonesia’s province of West Timor last month.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, voiced concern that Indonesian authorities were asking the East Timorese in West Timor whether they wanted to return.

UN officials received assurances this week that all the refugees would be allowed to return to East Timor, but were worried that they may be too intimidated to admit to Indonesian forces that they wanted to go back.