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.