UN leaves Dili compound amid fears for refugees

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)