Mantiri appointment may still face opposition: Evans

Mantiri appointment may still face opposition: Evans

JAKARTA (JP): Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans said on
Saturday that he remained doubtful whether a recent comment made
by Lt. Gen. (ret.) H.B.L. Mantiri would be sufficient to quell
the outcry against his appointment as Indonesia's new ambassador
to Australia.

Evans told journalists outside the Parliament House in
Canberra that Mantiri's expression of regret over the Dili
incident was helpful.

"However it does remain to be seen whether he has gone far
enough to resolve this problem in its entirety."

Mantiri has been named as Indonesia's envoy to Australia to
replace Ambassador Sabam Siagian, who ends his four-year term
this month.

The Australian foreign minister last week suggested that
Mantiri apologize for a 1992 press interview in which he said
what happened in the 1991 Dili incident was "quite proper."

Demonstrators and security personnel clashed at a cemetery in
the East Timorese capital on Nov. 12, 1991, causing the death of
several dozen civilians.

Mantiri made the purported remarks while he was chief the
Udayana Military Regional Command, which overseas East Timor. He
was assigned to the post after the incident, and was therefore
not personally involved in it.

On Saturday The Australian newspaper quoted the general as
telling a Radio Australia correspondent that he regretted the
incident "from the bottom of my heart."

Evans said he doubted whether Mantiri's latest remark would be
sufficient, especially since "he declined to apologize for those
remarks he did make back in July 1992."

Evans warned of the difficulties Mantiri could face when he
arrives in Australia if he refuses to apologize, "unless perhaps
there is on the record something really very clear in the nature
of a statement of regret."

Explanation

Meanwhile, as reported by the Jawa Pos on Saturday, Mantiri
told journalists in Surabaya over the weekend that he would not
make an apology.

"I will not apologize. But I have prepared an explanation, a
sort of clarification," he said.

Evans said on Saturday he had had two-conversations with his
Indonesian counterpart, Ali Alatas, about the matter.

"This whole issue is now the subject of current discussion
between me and Indonesian Foreign Minister Alatas," he said in an
interview with a journalist, a transcript of which was obtained.
"It's been a very much more complex matter than perhaps meets the
eye, as most things are in relation to Indonesia," he said.

Speaking of the East Timor problem and how the United Nations
still regards it as a non self-determining territory, Evans
suggested that self-determination may not necessarily imply
independence for the East Timorese people.

"So long as they're comfortable with having some status within
another country, that's one way in which the matter can be
resolved," he said.

Evans asserted that Jakarta should produce a "decent
reconciliation package" which included a reduction of military
forces there and "much better respect for human rights than has
been the case in the past."

Along with respect for East Timor's cultural integrity and an
economic program to help the territory's youth, Evans expressed
confidence that such a package "would be seen by the majority of
the East Timorese people as a way of satisfying their
aspirations."(mds)