UN to stay on in E. Timor after independence

UN to stay on in E. Timor after independence

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters): The United Nations Security Council
backed a strong international presence in East Timor after the
territory becomes independent next year and told Indonesia to
reign in armed gangs intimidating refugees.

The United Nations expects East Timor to declare independence
at the "tail-end" of 2001, after elections for an assembly that
is to draft and adopt a constitution, according to the UN
administrator in the territory, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

In a statement read at a public meeting, the council stressed
the "importance of further work on the transition to
independence, including a timetable and mechanisms for a
constitution and elections."

Endorsing recommendations by a council mission that went to
the region last month, the statement said post-independence
planning should start soon for a "strong international presence"
to provide "financial, technical and security assistance."

The United Nations had been running the territory during its
transition to independence August 1999 when East Timorese voted
overwhelmingly to break from Indonesia, which invaded the former
Portuguese colony in 1975.

To protest the vote, militia with Indonesian army support laid
waste to the territory, killing and burning buildings to the
ground. Tens of thousands of East Timorese fled or were herded
across the border to the Indonesian western part of the island,
where more than 100,000 of them remain.

The council called on Indonesia to take "decisive action" in
disarming and disbanding the militia, now in West Timor,
separating them from refugees and prosecuting those responsible
for criminal acts, said the statement read by Russian ambassador
Sergei Lavrov, this month's council president.

It welcomed the adoption of Indonesian legislation to
establish ad hoc human rights tribunals for those accused of
serious human rights abuses. But it underlined the need to bring
to justice perpetrators of the rampage in East and West Timor and
those who killed two UN peacekeepers and on Sept. 6 murdered
three UN relief in West Timor.

The statement regretted "that those responsible for the murder
of the peacekeepers have not been arrested" and called for "an
early start" to trials of those accused of killing the
humanitarian workers.