Timorese need help

Timorese need help

Army-sponsored militias are on the rampage in the Indonesian territory of East Timor. They are stirring up violence against independence-seeking activists and threatening to foreclose an early plebiscite by which the Timorese are to choose between autonomy and independence.

East Timor is the small former Portuguese colony (for three centuries) that Indonesia invaded in 1975 and repressed thereafter. The chance to break this pattern of Third World colonization arose only last year when the military-backed Soeharto regime was replaced by the administration of B.J. Habibie. The United Nations opened peace talks that produced an Indonesian offer, confirmed on Friday, to let the Timorese choose between a liberal autonomy or independence outright. It was the least Indonesia could do.

But it was too much for civilian hard-liners in the Cabinet and for unreconstructed elements in the Indonesian military. Paramilitaries have run wild. From detention, the acknowledged leader of Timorese nationalism, "Xanana" Gusmao, has called for "popular insurrection".

Before all hope of a peaceful negotiated transition in East Timor is undermined, an international presence needs to be placed in the territory to oversee the vote. This is made essential by Indonesia's flagrant neglect of its responsibility to provide law and order. The United Nations does not seem to be in the right temper for peace-keeping at the moment. Politically, Asians have been slow to think regionally about such missions. That puts a burden on Australia, which has the proximity to ensure interest, and the resources, including its democratic system, to provide leadership in assisting a neighbor to be reborn free.

-- The Washington Post