E Timor prime minister calls for int'l tribunal to try RI officers
E Timor prime minister calls for int'l tribunal to try RI officers
Associated Press, Dili, East Timor
East Timor prime minister on Friday called for the establishment of an international tribunal in a neutral country to try Indonesian military officers for the bloodshed that swept the country when it voted to break from Jakarta in 1999.
Mari Alkatiri also criticized the trials of 18 senior Indonesian officials in Jakarta over their alleged roles in the violence, which left up to 2,000 people dead.
"I am not satisfied (with the Jakarta trials)," he told reporters after meeting with President Xanana Gusmao. "They are like a piece of theater."
The Jakarta trials, which followed intense international pressure on Indonesia to prosecute those responsible, have so far acquitted 12 suspects and convicted five, who got sentences from three to 10 years.
Alkatiri's comments will likely cheer local and foreign rights activists, who have also criticized the Jakarta trials and called on Gusmao to push for the prosecution of the Indonesian officials in an international war crimes tribunal.
Alkatiri said there was "an obligation to establish an international tribunal in a neutral country to punish and bring to justice the perpetrators." He did not elaborate.
Alkatiri said he and several ministers were traveling to Jakarta on June 10 and would discuss the issue of an international tribunal with President Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Indonesian troops and their militia proxies destroyed much of East Timor and killed up to 2,000 people before and after a U.N.- sponsored independence referendum in 1999.
Gusmao has said that maintaining ties with its giant neighbor and former occupying power are more important than pursing justice for those accused in the violence, which only stopped when international peacekeeping troops arrived in East Timor.
Prosecutors in the capital Dili are pursuing their own war crimes trials. They have indicted nearly 250 people, including the former chief of the Indonesian military, Gen. Wiranto. Thirty people - mostly former militiamen - have been convicted.
Indonesia has said it will not send any officers to Dili to stand trial. It is unlikely to agree to cooperate with an international tribunal unless foreign governments and the United Nations put intense pressure on it to do so.
Jakarta convened the trials in Jakarta to head off an international drive to set up a U.N. war crimes trial for East Timor akin to those for ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda.