Improve Timor scene: Alatas

JAKARTA (JP): The international solution to the East Timor problem depends to a large extent on Indonesia's ability to develop the province and to improve its human rights record there, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas said yesterday.

"I think the key to the solution of East Timor lies in East Timor itself," Alatas told a hearing with the House of Representatives here yesterday.

He said present conditions in the province made Indonesia vulnerable to foreign attacks regarding the country's human rights record.

East Timor was integrated into Indonesia in 1976. However, the United Nations still recognizes Lisbon as the administrative power there.

Jakarta has often been criticized over human rights abuses in East Timor. Harsh criticisms followed the death of several dozen civilians at the hand of security forces during a demonstration in Dili in November 1991.

There was further outrage earlier this year when Indonesian soldiers executed six unarmed civilians in an isolated village in the regency of Liquisa. The two officers most directly involved in the killing were sentenced to jail terms on Monday and Tuesday this week.

Alatas said that such incidents made Indonesia prone to continued attacks regarding human rights and called for such abuses to avoided in the future.

Alatas conceded that human rights violations persist, although he did not give details.

"There are things which leave us open to human rights criticism. These things exist, we have to admit it," he said.

Other problems were highlighted as the minister touched upon the military's response to demonstrations by East Timorese youths.

"Our security apparatus, to be honest, sometimes reacts excessively," Alatas said.

Alatas said that the solution to the problem lay in the province's development and the overall effort to eliminate cases which made possible continued allegations of human right abuses.

He expressed a wish for the emergence of a situation in which "anytime someone wants to visit at East Timor we can just let them."

"If that is accomplished, not a single country, including Portugal, will be able to get other countries to keep making an issue out of East Timor," he said.

Obstacles

Speaking on other obstacles to a solution to the East Timor problem, Alatas accused Portugal of prolonging the controversy.

"If Portugal still refuses to settle the matter, then we can't clap with just one hand," he said.

He suggested that the problem, at the Portuguese end, resulted from domestic discord regarding the best resolution to the dispute.

"Their position continues to drift," he said, while noting that Portugal's election in October could result in a new stance in Lisbon.

Alatas lamented Lisbon's persistence, along with that of other anti-integrationists, in fueling the controversy by raising the issue in international forums and accused them of inciting demonstrations in the province.

"Through facsimiles, telephones and other means we know those kids who demonstrate (in East Timor) are given instructions, enticed with many things," he said.

Alatas also spoke of the recent All-Inclusive Intra East Timor Dialog, admitting that, although the meeting's results should not be judged in terms of winning or losing, Indonesia had been taken slightly off-guard.

"There are one or two things which should not have been put in," he said in reference to the Dialog's final declaration.

With the facilitation of the UN, a meeting between pro- and anti-integration East Timorese was held in Austria recently.

The meeting was meant to reconcile the opposing factions and create a conducive climate for the on-going bilateral talks between Portugal and Indonesia under the aegis of the UN Secretary-General.

Alatas pointed to paragraph six of the declaration which alluded to UN Resolution 37/30 as the basis of the bilateral talks, a Resolution which Indonesia has rejected and was not, he said, the basis of the talks.

Although the legal and practical implications were minimal, Alatas said, there might be political repercussions.

Meanwhile, legislator Aisyah Amini of the United Development Party expressed her disapproval yesterday of a continuation of the Dialog.

She said that the purpose of the Dialog had been to allow East Timorese to gain first-hand knowledge of each other's opinions and that this had now been accomplished.

She asked that her view be officially noted during yesterday's hearing with Alatas. (mds)