Seventy people arrested in East Timor brawls

Seventy people arrested in East Timor brawls

DILI (JP): Seventy people have been arrested following five
days of street brawls involving Roman Catholic church activists
and prointegration youths in Viqueque, the military said
yesterday.

Col. Mahidin Simbolon, chief of the East Timor military
command, told The Jakarta Post last night that the youths would
be questioned about their involvement in the incidents that
occurred between Feb. 7 and Feb. 11.

Government and military officials in Viqueque said the
situation had returned to normal yesterday. Church sources said
many people were still missing.

Catholic priests in the Viqueque parish who witnessed the
brawls said the unrest started when a group of prointegration
youths in Gada Paksi waylaid 10 church activists en route to a
meeting in Viqueque town.

They said the prointegration youths started to attack the
church activists without reason and hurled abuse at the
accompanying priests after their demands for identity cards were
turned down.

The fighting continued for another four days until the
military intervened.

Representative

In another development, Reuters reported from the United
Nations headquarters in New York that Pakistan's former U.N.
envoy, Jamsheed Marker, was appointed Secretary-General Kofi
Annan's personal representative for East Timor Wednesday.

Marker, aged 74, retired in March 1995 after more than four
years as his country's U.N. ambassador.

The United Nations has yet to recognize the 1976 integration
of East Timor, a year after the departure of the colonial power
Portugal. Talks aimed at finding an internationally acceptable
solution were initiated by the then-Secretary-General, Javier
Perez de Cuellar, in 1983 and continued by his successor, Boutros
Boutros-Ghali.

In announcing Marker's appointment, U.N. spokesman Fred
Eckhard said it was part of Annan's effort to give impetus to
finding a "just, comprehensive and internationally acceptable
solution to the question of East Timor."

While the new secretary-general intended to be personally
engaged in these efforts, he had asked Marker to represent him in
all aspects of his good offices function, including talks under
U.N. auspices between Indonesia and Portugal. He would also be
involved in consultations that the secretary-general holds with a
cross-section of East Timorese figures.

The eighth round of the long-running talks between the foreign
ministers of Indonesia and Portugal took place in Geneva last
June under Boutros-Ghali. A ninth round scheduled for December
was postponed.

Annan held separate exploratory meetings this month with
Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and Portuguese Deputy
Prime Minister Antonio Vitorino on the fringes of the World
Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. (33/pan)