UN praises East Timor's peaceful campaigning

UN praises East Timor's peaceful campaigning

DILI, East Timor (Agencies): United Nations officials said on
Monday the campaign for East Timor's historic elections has been
one of the most peaceful that the world body has supervised in
many years.

Even so, UN peacekeepers said they are ready to react to any
outbreak of violence and Indonesia has temporarily closed the
land border with the nascent nation in case of trouble.

"The political campaign has, on the whole, been marked by
exemplary civility and peacefulness," said Carlos Valenzuela,
chief electoral officer in East Timor's UN transitional
administration.

On Thursday, 425,000 voters will elect an 88-member assembly
that will draft a new constitution and set East Timor on the road
to independence after four centuries of Portuguese colonialism
and 24 years of Indonesian military occupation.

Full independence is expected to be declared next year.

East Timor's first democratic elections will be held exactly
two years after voters overwhelmingly opted to break free from
Indonesia in a UN sponsored referendum.

In contrast to the tranquility of the current election
campaign, the 1999 plebiscite was marred by an explosion of
violence by Indonesian troops and their militia proxies in which
hundreds of people were killed and most of the half-island's
infrastructure and buildings were destroyed.

Former Indonesian president B.J. Habibie has blamed the United
Nations for causing most of the violence in East Timor by
breaking a promise to let Jakarta know the results of the
independence vote in advance.

In an interview published on Monday with The Sydney Morning
Herald, Habibie said the UN had promised to notify the Indonesian
government of the outcome of East Timor's August 1999
independence referendum three days before making the results
public.

Fears that Thursday's vote might degenerate into fighting
among supporters of 16 rival political parties have come to
nothing, Valenzuela said.

"I have been involved in 14 different election operations with
the United Nations in many different countries of the world,"
Valenzuela said. "Not on any other occasion have I seen such a
level of peacefulness and calm as in East Timor in 2001."

The sole violent incident during the campaign was the stoning
of a car belonging to a political party by supporters of a rival
party, he said.

Australian army Capt. Jeffrey Squire, a spokesman for the
8,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, said there had been no
incidents in East Timor or on the border with the Indonesian-held
western half of the island that would warrant an increased alert
status.

"We have plans in place to deal with any contingency and will
respond quickly and robustly to any security threat," he said.

In a related development, Indonesian police said they had
closed border crossing points between West and East Timor ahead
due to security fears, the Indonesia's state-run Antara news
agency reported on Monday.

The agency cited border police chief Brig. Apolinario da Silva
as saying the frontier will be reopened on Sept. 5.

Meanwhile, East Timor's largest party, the Revolutionary Front
for an Independent East Timor -- or Fretelin -- received a strong
boost when it's platform was endorsed by a popular religious
movement that combines Roman Catholicism with Timorese mysticism.
Leaders of the Sagrada Familia -- or Sacred Family -- said on
Monday that they now backed Fretelin's candidates.

Fretelin, which led East Timor's long and bloody struggle for
independence from Indonesian rule, is expected to win the largest
share of the vote.