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)