UN official calls for tribunal

UN official calls for tribunal

DILI (AP): A top UN official in East Timor urged on Friday the international community to set up a war crimes tribunal if Indonesia fails to prosecute those responsible for atrocities committed after the territory voted for independence in 1999.

Peter Galbraith, political affairs minister in the UN administration in East Timor, said he had "seen very little evidence" that Indonesia was serious in its efforts to bring to trial those responsible for the violence.

"If there is no progress toward bringing to justice the people responsible for the crimes ... there should be an international war crimes tribunal," Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, told journalists in East Timor's capital, Dili.

Galbraith said the world had already waited two years for Indonesia to prosecute those responsible. However, little had happened.

His call for international action is the highest yet from a serving UN official. Until now, UN workers in East Timor, and at the world body's headquarters in New York, have said Indonesia should be allowed to prosecute the perpetrators of the violence itself, before an international court is considered.