UN leaves Dili compound amid fears for refugees

JAKARTA (JP): The United Nations abandoned its compound in the East Timorese capital of Dili on Tuesday and issued a dire warning that thousands of internally displaced people were on the brink of starvation.

The UN mission in East Timor (UNAMET) evacuated 110 staff members and 1,487 refugees sheltering in its Dili compound to Australia, saying security was "not really tenable".

A shuttle service of 11 Australian Air Force Hercules began the operation at dawn to evacuate the UN compound, and Australian troops are understood to have helped secure Dili's Komoro Airport.

Two battalions of the Indonesian Military (TNI) led by the Security Restoration Operation commander in charge of Dili, Col. Geerhan, escorted the evacuees on their way to the airport.

He said the operation was conducted before the sun rose in order to avoid possible disturbance from certain parties.

The evacuation proceeded untroubled, except for a man who died from a heart attack. The body of the refugee was handed to his family.

It took TNI five hours to complete the evacuation, which was done under the watchful eyes of the head of Security Restoration Operation Command Maj. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri.

Some East Timorese evacuees told Antara that they did not know where they were heading for. A boy of around 15 broke away from the line before several UNAMET staff could persuade him to board the Hercules.

UNAMET chief Ian Martin told AFP on arrival in the northern Australian city of Darwin at the start of the refugee airlift that conditions in Dili had worsened and that urgent action was needed.

Martin said the refugees evacuated on Tuesday were only "a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in East Timor" and that thousands were on the verge of starvation.

"There are very large groups of people with no access to food. It is hard to overstate the urgency of bringing food to them," he said.

He added the compound in Dili was now closed, but stressed UNAMET had not left East Timor completely and that about a dozen UN staff members were still in the province monitoring conditions.

The mission was to maintain its presence in the territory until three months after the self-determination ballot on Aug. 30, in which almost 80 percent of the voters were against an autonomy offer within Indonesia.

Dili was largely calm on Tuesday, with some minor looting and burning reported across town. The East Timor capital had turned into a ghost town after thousands of people sought refuge by fleeing their violence-hit homes.

Later in the day, military authorities deported American freelance journalist Alan Nairn for visa violations.

Kiki was quoted by Antara as saying that Nairn entered the country on Aug. 25 illegally by using a tourist visa instead of a journalist visa. But Nairn told reporters that he just arrived in Dili some two weeks ago.

Nairn, who witnessed the Nov. 12, 1991 massacre in Dili when military troops shot at demonstrators, was in the UNAMET compound before the bulk of the mission was evacuated.

Aid

As talks in New York aimed at hammering out a UN peacekeeping agreement for the shattered territory dragged on, aid and relief agencies demanded urgent food drops and the rapid deployment of UN peacekeepers.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, warned from Geneva of a humanitarian catastrophe facing the thousands of terrified people driven out of cities into the inaccessible mountains by the militias.

"We are in a race against time to save the lives of tens of thousands, or perhaps even more, of terrified people affected by weeks of wanton violence and forcible displacement," she said.

UNHCR field officer Christine Planas told AFP that the organization wanted to fly food into the airport in the East Timorese capital of Dili and deliver it by land, rather than organizing often ineffectual airdrops.

But she said Indonesia had failed to provide guarantees that flights into the Dili airport would not be attacked by militias.

"Minimum security guarantees have to be provided before you can land and we have not been able to get these," Planas said.

The same concern was also aired by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which sent two representatives to Dili to observe the possibility of resuming humanitarian activities in East Timor.

ICRC's Symeon Antaolas and Bob McKay met with military authorities on Tuesday to evaluate the latest security condition in the territory following days of turmoil.

"We hope to see security restored as soon as possible so that we can start sending food and medical supplies to displaced people in East Timor," ICRC information officer Sri Wahyu Endah told The Jakarta Post.

Reports say that some 300,000 people are hiding in hills across the territory. (amd)