UK rights activist to head UN mission in East Timor
JAKARTA (Agencies): United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan named British human rights figure Ian Martin to head the UN mission to East Timor which will prepare for the August direct ballot on the future of the territory.
Martin, a former secretary-general of Amnesty International, established the first UN human rights operation in Rwanda in 1995.
A specialist in Haitian affairs, Martin worked at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and in 1993 served on the joint UN-Organization of American States mission to Haiti.
Some 600 UN staff will be deployed to oversee the August 8 ballot in the former Portuguese colony. The ballot will allow East Timorese to vote on whether to remain part of Indonesia with wide-ranging autonomy or become an independent state. The ballot is being arranged according to a deal signed on May 5 by Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas and his Portuguese counterpart Jaime Gama.
According to Reuters, the UN team will include 400 voter registration and polling officials, 15 to 18 political and civilian police advisers and various logistics, communications, and information staff.
The UN will use the Ministry of Education's Teachers Training Center in Dili as its headquarter because the building can accommodate nearly 1,000 people.
Meanwhile, a 15-strong team from Japan arrived in Dili on Saturday to prepare for the planned operation of the Japanese contingent under the UN flag.
The deputy head of Asian affairs at Japan's Foreign Ministry, Sumio Tarui, said his team would be in Dili for about five days.
"We will hear the people's concerns here in East Timor and Jakarta and we'll have an exchange of views with each other," Tarui said upon his arrival at Comoro Airport.
President B.J. Habibie has requested Japan, the United States, Britain, Australia, the Philippines and Germany send police to help secure the ballot in the province.
Habibie will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's special envoy, Seiichiro Noboru, on Monday. Noboru is expected to inform the President about Japan's planned participation in the UN mission to East Timor. Obuchi, through Noboru, also is expected to ask for a security guarantee for the Japanese team.
Noboru will convey a letter from Obuchi containing a call for continued efforts to keep order in East Timor so the referendum can run smoothly, AFP reported.
Participating in a mission in a foreign country is a sensitive issue in Japan, although the country sent a similar team to supervise the general election in Cambodia in 1993.
In Bali, Alatas and Minister of Defense/Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen. Wiranto concluded on Friday their two-day meeting with 31 proindependence members and 29 prointegration members. The meeting was organized so the ministers could brief the two groups about the government's autonomy offer for the province.
Meanwhile, Dili Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo and Baucau Bishop Basilio Do Nascimento will jointly organize in Australia a week-long dialog, starting on May 22, between proindependence and prointegration groups in the province.
The meeting is a follow-up to the Dare Dialog held in Dili last September.
Antara reported the dialog also would be attended by TNI's chief for territorial affairs, Lt. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Udayana Military Commander Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri, who oversees security in East Timor.
The two bishops also invited Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Abdurrahman Wahid and Indonesian Bishops Council chairman Joseph Suwatan to the event.
Separately, American doctor Dan Murphy was expelled from East Timor on Saturday for his alleged support of proindependence groups.
The government said that while Murphy came to Indonesia as a tourist, he had worked as a volunteer at Dili's Motael clinic for six months. Most proindependence supporters prefer to be treated at the clinic rather than at the military-run Wirahusada Hospital in Dili. (prb)