East Timor prone to unrest: UN

East Timor prone to unrest: UN

UNITED NATIONS (AP): The United Nations raised alarm Friday at the potential for social unrest in East Timor because of widespread unemployment, high food prices and frayed social services in the aftermath of the territory's vote for independence.

To try to counter the risk, Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended that the UN transitional administration in East Timor, or UNTAET, make creating jobs and beefing up East Timor's destroyed infrastructure a priority.

"The East Timorese have received UNTAET with a great deal of goodwill and very high expectations as the embodiment of the international community's promise of support," Annan wrote in a report to the Security Council. "However, they are in desperate straits and are understandably impatient for UNTAET to deliver on this promise."

East Timor's people voted overwhelmingly in a UN-organized ballot Aug. 30 to separate from Indonesia, which invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 and annexed it a year later.

Indonesian-backed militias went on a weeks-long killing and looting rampage to protest the results, destroying large parts of the territory and driving tens of thousands of East Timorese into neighboring, Indonesian-controlled West Timor.

The United Nations estimates there are still nearly 100,000 people in refugee camps set up in West Timor, where the pro- Indonesian militias continue to operate, harassing and intimidating the refugees. While the United Nations has urged the refugees return home, UN officials privately say they understand their unwillingness to do so since conditions in East Timor are scarcely better and in some cases worse than those in the camps.

In his report, Annan said the United Nations mission, which has been running the territory for three months, had established the basic elements of an administrative structure in East Timor and is trying to coordinate humanitarian relief efforts.

But the effects of the systematic destruction of the territory, particularly in civil and public services, would continue to be a serious obstacle to progress, he said.

"Moreover, widespread unemployment and the disruption of the education system and other social and public services, combined with the very high prices of food and other daily necessities, bear the potential for serious social problems," he wrote.

In addition to trying to create more jobs, expanding trade will be an important step in increasing supply and lowering prices of basic goods, Annan said.