Peacekeepers' mission in E. Timor accomplished: Premier Howard
Peacekeepers' mission in E. Timor accomplished: Premier Howard
SYDNEY, Australia (AP): A multinational force in East Timor has accomplished its mission to restore peace and order, Australia's prime minister said on Monday after returning from a visit there.
Prime Minister John Howard said the situation was a vast improvement over September, when Australian troops were among the first of the force to enter the former Indonesian territory.
"Things have improved quite dramatically," said Howard, who met with the force's Australian commander, Maj.-Gen. Peter Cosgrove, during his one-day visit on Sunday.
"The security position on the ground in East Timor is dramatically better and different and more safe than it was when the troops first went there on Sept. 20," Howard told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Australian troops currently account for over half of the 7,500 international soldiers deployed in East Timor. Their arrival ended a bloody three-week rampage by Indonesian troops and their militia allies in the wake of an overwhelming vote for independence on Aug. 30.
A senior Australian official said on Monday that Australia had expected there would be many more deadly clashes in East Timor between the peacekeepers and Indonesian-backed armed forces.
"Everybody was expecting some fairly major clashes in which possibly quite large numbers of militias would be killed," said the official, speaking in Sydney on condition of anonymity.
Only a handful of deadly clashes occurred involving the international troops. Two Australian soldiers were injured in one firefight, and at least two militiamen and two Indonesian police officers were shot, one fatally, in separate incidents since Sept. 20.
Last month, the UN Security Council approved a blue beret contingent of more than 9,000 soldiers and 1,600 policemen to take over from the current emergency force once the world body formally takes charge of the region in order to guide it to independence.
Howard said he did not know exactly when the peacekeeping force would be replaced by the blue beret contingent, to which Australia will contribute up to 2,000 troops.
Meanwhile, victims of a wave of anti-independence killings in East Timor two months ago were buried in a somber ceremony in Dili on Monday.
The 23 unidentified bodies were among 26 found in a mass grave in Indonesia's West Timor last week. It was the largest individual group of bodies yet to be discovered and the first across the border.
They were reburied under searing afternoon sun in a ceremony watched by around 200 people, but a member of the multinational force said that could be exhumed again to provide evidence concerning the killings.
"These bodies may be exhumed as a later date which is why the coffins and grave sites are numbered," a military police source with the force told Reuters.
A group of men wearing bright green rubber gloves lifted the simple pine caskets from a United Nations truck, while military police ushered them to the corresponding grave sites marked by a sawn-off steel post with a numbered tag.
The 23 bodies were brought back to Dili at the weekend from the site just over the border where they were discovered. They were kept temporarily in the former jail of the Indonesian military.
A priest at the ceremony said they had been buried in Dili at the request of the territory's spiritual leader Bishop Carlos Belo as they had not been identified.
They are believed to have been victims of a massacre in the church in the southwestern town of Suai, near the site where they were discovered. The bodies included some women and children.