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.