Govt rejects plan for UN rights office here

JAKARTA (JP): The government denied yesterday a United Nations officials' claim that a human rights office would open here soon to monitor the situation in East Timor.

The Indonesian foreign ministry's director for international organizations, N. Hassan Wirayuda, told The Jakarta Post that no agreement to set up an office here had been reached.

"There are not enough grounds for the commissioner to place a representative in Jakarta to monitor the human rights situation in East Timor," Hassan said.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso expressed the hope in Geneva Wednesday that an agreement might soon be reached with Jakarta to allow the commissioner to place a representative here.

Lasso further claimed that Indonesia had made a new proposal on the matter a fortnight ago.

Hassan maintained yesterday that such statements were untrue.

He explained that Indonesia had for several years conducted talks on technical cooperation in the field of human rights with the human rights commissioner and the human rights center in Geneva.

A memorandum of intent on the technical cooperation was signed in October 1994. The cooperation entailed a broad cooperation in human rights development and awareness in Indonesia.

However, according to Hassan, there have been attempts to deviate the cooperation into human rights monitoring such as would be implied by having a human rights office here.

He said it would be completely untrue to suggest that Indonesia had agreed to the establishment of a monitoring office since what had been signed in 1994 covered only technical cooperation.

"We have observed since last year a tendency to shift away from the technical cooperation aspect," he said.

When asked why he thought Lasso would make such a statement, Hassan replied: "There's probably pressure from western countries on Ayala Lasso's office to head in that direction."

As a follow-up to the memorandum signed in 1994, the UN Commissioner's office presented a draft memorandum of understanding last year. Unfortunately, said Hassan, the draft had veered away from technical cooperation into human rights monitoring.

"As a counter, we presented our own draft two weeks ago ... which contains no elements of human rights monitoring," Hassan said.

Thus, he argued, it would be untrue to suggest that Indonesia's recent proposal, as remarked by Lasso, meant the establishment of a UN human rights office here was likely in the near future.

The post of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was created after the 1993 UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna.

Lasso is soon to step down from his three-year term to become foreign minister of Ecuador.

The Indonesian delegation to the 50th annual meeting of the UN human rights commission, due to begin Monday in Geneva, would be headed by the foreign ministry's director general for political affairs Izhar Ibrahim.

Hassan would not predict whether the question of East Timor would be raised in either a resolution or the chairman's statement. "We'll have to wait and see whether they decide to bring it up," he said.

The former Portuguese colony of East Timor has been a regular inclusion in the commission chairman's statement for the past few years. It integrated into Indonesia in 1976, but the United Nations still considers Lisbon the administering power there.

The issue is expected to be discussed in the second half of the six-week meeting. (mds)