Call in the UN now

Violence in East Timor began escalating before independence leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao called, from his detention house in Jakarta, on his supporters on Monday to take up arms against the Indonesian government and pro-Indonesian forces in East Timor. Both prointegration and proindependence forces have been bolstering their positions, including their weaponry, since President B.J. Habibie announced in January the government was prepared to grant East Timor independence.

Both groups are seeking to gain the upper hand ahead of the UN-sponsored ballot in East Timor, scheduled for July, to determine whether the province will remain part of Indonesia or become an independent state. With so much at stake, the campaign to gain superiority in the province at times has become savage. The violence which erupted in the town of Liquisa this past week was only one of many bloody clashes between the two camps over the past few months.

Fears of East Timor plunging into bloody civil war -- the reason given by the Indonesian government for its reluctance to withdraw from the territory -- are becoming all too real. East Timorese are becoming more and more polarized -- those who support integration and those who wish for independence. There is hardly any middle ground left.

Even the Indonesian government's offer of wide-ranging autonomy for the province is looking more and more like a formality. Most people, particularly the two warring groups, already are looking ahead to what will happen after the July ballot. That means not only strengthening their ranks by recruiting more supporters, but also acquiring weapons from any and all sources. Even the Indonesian government appears to have resigned itself to losing the ballot. This was clearly demonstrated by President Habibie's statement that he would like to see the separation process from East Timor completed by the end of the year.

While there are signs that East Timor is heading toward civil war, what is even more disturbing is that there are hardly any moderate forces left to arrest the process. The Liquisa violence and Xanana's call for armed insurrection came a few days after Dili Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo and Baucau Bishop Basilio do Nascimento announced plans to mediate between the proindependence and prointegration camps. If anyone in East Timor still commands the respect of the people, it is the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. Now that these respected church leaders are being ignored, we have every reason to worry that civil war could indeed erupt in East Timor.

Until his call for armed insurrection on Monday, Xanana Gusmao had managed to project himself as a moderate leader willing to pursue peaceful solutions in the province, and not the guerrilla leader he once was. He even managed to use his immense influence to restrain his supporters. After Monday, he no longer can be counted on to check his followers.

The Indonesian government, which had no legitimacy in East Timor in the first place, is fast losing the faith of the East Timorese in its ability to maintain peace and order there, especially amid allegations the military has been arming prointegration forces. Given these suspicions, and without the full support of the people there, it is difficult to envisage the military playing an objective peacekeeping role in the province.

All this points to the need for some kind of United Nations presence in East Timor now, rather than later, if only to arrest the violence. Despite conflicting claims about the death toll in Liquisa -- proindependence forces say 40 died while the Indonesian military says five perished -- the incident calls for immediate action. A UN peacekeeping force would not only keep the two conflicting parties apart, it could also begin the process of disarming them, a prerequisite to the UN-sponsored ballot.

Mere statements of concern and calls for restraint made from a distance by the United Nations, the United States, Australia and Japan likely will fall on deaf ears, particularly in light of the fact that similar appeals from respected local church leaders already have been ignored. The presence of the United Nations in the province is the only hope left to stop the violence and prevent a full-scale civil war from erupting in East Timor.