Give RI a 'bit more time'

Give RI a 'bit more time'

GENEVA (AFP): Indonesia should be given "a bit more time" to take judicial action against people suspected of involvement in last year's atrocities in East Timor after its vote for independence, the UN official running East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, said here on Friday.

De Mello, in Geneva for a five-day visit, told a news briefing that what needed to be determined now was whether the files of 22 suspects named by the Indonesian attorney general's office in early September would be passed on to the courts.

"We're reaching a point where we can make a determination as to whether the Indonesian judiciary is or is not acting on these cases," he told reporters.

"So let's give them a bit more time," he added. De Mello also referred to the arrest of former East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres and "practical steps" by the army and police to disarm militia as "positive signs".

Pro-Indonesian militias went on a rampage of killings and destruction after the ballot result of August 1999, forcing some 300,000 people to flee into Indonesian-controlled West Timor.