UN justifies shooting soldier

UN justifies shooting soldier

DILI, East Timor (AP): A UN investigating team has found that
peacekeepers were justified in shooting dead an Indonesian
soldier last month, an UN official said on Monday.

The Indonesian soldier, a 21-year-old sergeant, was shot to
death on July 28 in a clash with about 30 New Zealand troops.
The soldier, who was out of uniform, fired at least two shots at
the peacekeepers from the Indonesian side of the unmarked border
before they returned fire.

The exchange occurred in scrubland about four kilometers (2.5
miles) southwest of the town of Tilomar, near East Timor's
southern coast.

"The investigating team consisting of United Nations military
observers concluded that the UN peacekeepers had acted within
reasonable grounds in engaging a man who they believed had fired
on them from over the border," said peacekeeping spokesman Capt.
Isabelito Sanchez.

There are about 8,000 peacekeepers stationed in East Timor.
The territory is being administered by the United Nations in
preparation for independence next year.

Meanwhile, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said on
Monday that her country's military authorities "would cooperate"
in any further probe.

"Nobody likes to see an incident on the border where a life is
lost, but ... the report from our soldiers was that they were
fired at," she said at a news conference in Wellington.

In a related development, Indonesia's former military
commander Gen. Wiranto -- who was sacked last year over
allegations of human rights abuses in East Timor -- told
reporters in Jakarta that he was ready to be tried if prosecutors
find evidence of wrongdoing.

"If we are found guilty then we are ready to be punished," he
said, after meeting new President Megawati Sukarnoputri. "We will
leave it to the government to prove the charges in an honest,
open trial."

Wiranto was commander of the armed forces when the army and
its militia proxies rampaged through East Timor after it voted to
secede from Indonesia in a UN-sponsored referendum.

The trials of several soldiers and militiamen, whom
prosecutors have implicated in the violence, are expected to
start later this year. Even though state-sponsored human-rights
investigators accused Wiranto of being involved in the bloodshed,
prosecutors have left his name off a list of those to be tried.