Call in the UN now

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.