RIGHTS-EAST TIMOR: UN Force Approved, but Some Problems Remain

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 1999 (IPS) - The UN Security Council unanimously approved early Wednesday the deployment of a multinational force to East Timor to restore law and order in the ravaged territory.

Officials here expected the deployment of the Australian-led force to begin before this week’s end but human rights activists and officials warned that some hurdles remained.

Chief among them was a provision in the Council’s draft resolution calling upon the Indonesian government “to cooperate with the multinational force” rather than asking Indonesia’s troops to withdraw.

Human Rights Watch argued that such language meant that “the Indonesian army could continue to have a major role in East Timor for at least two months and perhaps longer.”

Doubts about the Indonesian military’s willingness to cooperate were underscored by the burning and looting of the Dili headquarters of the UN mission in East Timor, or UNAMET, just hours after most UN personnel and refugees in the compound were evacuated to Australia Tuesday.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the evacuation was necessary because “we had many more staff in the compound than the space could accommodate.”

The United Nations was also concerned about the health and safety of the staff and roughly 1,000 Timorese refugees, he added, prompting the need for the withdrawal.

“After it was left, there were some looters who tried to come in,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas acknowledged. “But now the Indonesian military police have secured the compound.”

On paper, the multinational force intended for East Timor appeared strong and able to operate without any constraint from Indonesia.

A draft text of the resolution stateed that the force would have a unified command structure, a mandate to restore peace and security to East Timor and a four-month initial period to carry out its tasks.

The draft resolution noted Australia’s offer to lead the force, expected to initially comprise some 7,000 troops – including soldiers from Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

It is authorised to use force under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter.

Annan said he hoped the force would deploy at least some officers in East Timor “by the weekend at the latest.”

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday that contingents from several nations were ready to enter East Timor within the next few days once Council authorisation passed.

Downer added that there would be a “mechanism for cooperation” between the Australian-led troops and the Indonesian forces. “The Indonesian government is committed to making this process work,” he said.

Yet for critics of Indonesia’s brutal 24-year occupation of East Timor, the Council’s willingness to allow Indonesian troops to remain and carry out some security functions in East Timor is a mistake.

Jose Ramos Horta, the Nobel laureate and Timorese independence activist, argued that any Indonesian participation in future security work in East Timor could doom the multinational force and ensure further bloodshed.

“The Indonesian soldiers will shoot in front of the multinational force,” Ramos Horta contended. He argued that Indonesia had lost all moral authority in East Timor and could not be trusted.

“The United Nations has made too many mistakes in the past with the May agreement,” he said, referring to the UN-signed peace accord between Indonesia and Portugal which placed Indonesia in charge of security for East Timor’s self-determination ballot.

After nearly 80 percent of East Timorese voters rejected continued Indonesian rule in the Aug. 30 vote and opted for independence, pro-Indonesia militias began a campaign of violence which has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people.

“They have destroyed a country,” Ramos Horta said.

In a report issued by a Security Council team Monday, the United Nations placed the blame squarely on the Indonesian military, pointing to “the involvement of large elements of the Indonesian military and police in East Timor in organising and backing the unacceptably violent actions of the militias.”

In addition, there were “consistent reports of the direct involvement of large elements of the TNI (Indonesian army) and police in (the) forced relocation campaign” of thousands of East Timorese to Indonesia’s province of West Timor, according to the report.

In response, the Security Council, while underlining Indonesia’s “continuing responsibility to maintain peace and security,” has moved quickly in the past two days to ensure that the multinational force, not Indonesia, would have the principal authority to restore order.

“Indonesian forces will probably be playing an advisory role, a liaison role” with the multinational force, Alatas conceded. “We are going to withdraw, but in a matter of weeks,” he added.

That may not satisfy the East Timorese, who were stunned by the initially weak international response once the violence in East Timor surged after the Aug. 30 vote. “My confidence in the United Nations is at a very low level,” Ramos Horta said.

Constancio Pinto, UN representative of the National Council of Timorese Resistance, a pro-independence coalition, said that hundreds of thousands of Timorese displaced by the fighting urgently needed food and medicine.

The United Nations has organised air drops of food for the East Timorese, but maintained Indonesia had not provided sufficient security guarantees for them to begin delivering the food drops.