August 30, 2000
An independent East Timor should ask foreign troops to stay on after the United Nations pulls out if Indonesia does not rein in violent militias, an East Timorese leader said on Wednesday. Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta said the international community had an obligation to help protect East Timor as long as pro-Jakarta militias based in Indonesian West Timor posed a threat.
There has been an upsurge in militia activity ahead of Wednesday's first anniversary of a U.N.-brokered ballot that saw the eastern half of Timor island vote to split from Indonesia after more than 23 years of often brutal rule. Pro-Jakarta militias rampaged after the vote, killing hundreds, leaving much of East Timor in ruins and forcing thousands to flee to refugee camps in West Timor. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in Dili for the anniversary events, said Canberra was prepared to provide troops for a longer deployment if the security situation was bad enough.
The congress of the main East Timor pro-independence group, the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), late on Tuesday voted to seek continued foreign military presence after the U.N. withdraws following elections due by the end of 2001. "So as long as we have (the militias) it is (an) obligation of the international community to face the challenge, the threat by keeping in East Timor a number of battalions beyond independence," said Ramos-Horta, deputy head of CNRT.
The militias, who recently killed two U.N. peacekeepers, operate from refugee camps in West Timor, where Indonesian troops and police have failed to halt their activities. Australia and New Zealand would most likely provide the bulk of any extended force, which would be smaller than the existing almost 8,000 strong peacekeeping contingent.
"We are not going to abandon East Timor," Downer told reporters. "Obviously, East Timor will need to be secure." But Downer said Canberra would prefer to work in a U.N. force. "It's possible that there will be a need for the United Nations peacekeeping operation after the point of independence and obviously we'll play our part in that if we're asked to do so, which you could safely assume we will be. "Obviously they want to draw down a peacekeeping force when they can, but the timing of these things will depend very much on the situation on the ground. And I don't think for a minute the United Nations will turn its back on East Timor."
The head of the United Nations transitional authority in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, told reporters on Tuesday that he expected such a request would be approved if the militias continued to pose a threat.
