East Timor seeks UN war crimes tribunal

East Timor seeks UN war crimes tribunal

SYDNEY, Australia (Agencies): East Timor's foreign minister called on Wednesday for a UN war crimes tribunal, saying Indonesia had failed to prove it was willing to prosecute army officers for 1999 atrocities in the breakaway territory.

Nobel peace prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, foreign affairs minister for the UN-run East Timorese administration, also questioned moves in Washington to ease a ban on military contacts while Indonesia's army seemed reluctant to mend its ways.

On a visit to Australia, Ramos-Horta told Reuters in an interview that 10 to 20-month sentences imposed by an Indonesian court in May on six men found guilty of slaying three UN aid workers in West Timor were "an outrage" and an "affront".

"It makes a mockery of all of us," the veteran East Timorese freedom campaigner said.

"So it is time for all of us to drop the pretense that we can trust the Indonesian legal system, that we should give them time, and the (UN) Security Council must do what it is supposed to do and that is set up a war crimes tribunal."

The aid workers -- an American, a Croat and an Ethiopian -- were murdered in one of the bloodiest attacks on UN civilian personnel. They were stabbed and their bodies dragged into the street and set ablaze.

The UN transitional administrator in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has called for greater efforts to prosecute those responsible for atrocities in East Timor in 1999, when the former Portuguese colony voted for independence from Jakarta.

The vote, ending 24 years of often brutal rule from Jakarta, sparked carnage as Indonesia-backed militia ran amok and over a quarter of East Timor's 900,000 people fled into neighboring West Timor.

The UN estimates over 1,000 people were killed by militia. East Timor's first elections are slated for Aug. 30, with full independence expected in 2002.

A special UN court for East Timor would be no simple matter. The United Nations has only created two war crimes tribunals, one for Rwanda and one for former Yugoslavia.

But Ramos-Horta said his people had run out of patience. "We are thoroughly, thoroughly disappointed. We feel cheated, betrayed by the Indonesian side," he said.

Ramos-Horta questioned the "wisdom and timing" of apparent moves within the U.S. government to relax a ban on military cooperation imposed after the East Timor bloodshed.

He said military elements appeared to have instigated some of the recent violence in Indonesia's restless provinces.

Soured relations

While he sympathized with the view in some Western capitals that maintaining Indonesia's territorial integrity was crucial to ensuring stability, "how best to pursue that is where we differ".

Ramos-Horta was due to give a speech in Sydney on Wednesday night, in which he planned to express East Timor's growing frustration at efforts to normalize relations with Indonesia.

"Bearing the scars of 25 years of occupation, we have walked half way to meet our tormentors carrying an olive branch," he says, according to excerpts.

"Yet we have been met by some with hatred as if we are the ones who had invaded, occupied, looted and raped."

Ramos-Horta said that fraying relations were not the fault of embattled Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, who faces possible impeachment, but of hard-line elements in the military.

If Wahid is impeached, or stands down over his chaotic 19- month rule, popular Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri is the most likely to succeed him. She is seen as close to the military and likely to take a tough stance on separatism.

"The closeness of Megawati and the military raises concerns for us," Ramos-Horta said. "I hope they don't undermine some of the positive steps that have been taken by the two sides to put the past where it belongs."

Megawati had also refused meetings with the East Timorese leadership and with the United Nations, which is administering the former Portuguese colony during its transition to independence.

Indonesia was irresponsible in continuing to allow the military-backed militia groups from East Timor to train in the Indonesian province of West Timor and that was unlikely to change under Megawati, Ramos Horta said.

"If anything, it will get worse," Ramos Horta said. "She is ultra-nationalistic, she has shown no sympathy whatsoever with East Timor, she has refused dialogue with the UN and with East Timorese president Xanana Gusmao.