Students, military involved in clashes

DILI, East Timor (JP): The military here warned yesterday that security forces would arrest any students staging new demonstrations.

Col. Kiki Syahnakri, chief of the East Timor military command, issued the warning after security forces peacefully dispersed a fresh demonstration at East Timor University.

"They have promised to stop demonstrating as of tomorrow. If they break the promise, we will arrest all the protesting students," he said after meeting with 11 student delegates at his office.

Kiki said no arrests were made in yesterday's demonstration, when security forces in anti-riot gear had to use several rounds of tear gas to disperse the protesters.

He made it clear that the military would no longer tolerate demonstrations which could destabilize the capital which has just recovered from two weeks of tension sparked by the murder of a local by a Bugis immigrant on Nov. 12.

He said he was informed of the students' demands and warned that peace and order would return to the province only if people stopped staging demonstrations.

The demonstration at the university provoked security forces to intervene after the students threw stones at three plain- clothes police officers that entered the campus, eyewitnesses said.

The students were voicing their demands that all Bugis immigrants be expelled from the province, that Fretilin rebel leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao be released from jail and that East Timor be given independence.

Xanana is serving a 20 year jail sentence in a Jakarta prison.

They hurled stones at a police dormitory near the campus to where the three officers had fled. (yac/sim)