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.