UN to dispatch team to probe murders in W. Timor

UN to dispatch team to probe murders in W. Timor

DILI (AP): The UN Security Council will dispatch a special
team to East Timor next month to investigate the killings of
three UN foreign aid workers in neighboring Indonesia, a top
official said on Friday.

East Timor's UN administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello said the
team would arrive in the capital Dili on Nov. 11.

He said investigators may try to travel to the border town of
Atambua in West Timor, where an anti-independence militia mob
murdered three workers of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
on Sept. 6, but it was not yet clear if Indonesia's government
would grant them permission.

Officials with Indonesia's foreign affairs department were not
immediately available for comment.

In the past the government has blocked efforts by the United
Nations to send a team to West Timor, saying it should be allowed
to investigate the killings itself.

Indonesian police in Atambua have recently arrested six
people, suspected of being involved in the murders.

The deaths of the three UN officials led to the world body to
evacuate all its staff from West Timor. Aid agencies have refused
to return to the region until the militias are brought under
control.

More than 120,000 East Timorese refugees are still living in
camps in the West Timor. Many of them have been prevented from
returning home by the same militias that laid waste to much of
East Timor last year after its people overwhelmingly voted for
independence in a UN-sponsored ballot.

A spokesman for the UN's refugee agency, Peter Kessler, said a
separate four-member team had been dispatched from the agency's
headquarters in Geneva to investigate the slayings.