UNHCR expects 25,000 more E. Timorese to return home

UNHCR expects 25,000 more E. Timorese to return home

Yemris Fointuna, The Jakarta Post, Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expects to see half
of the remaining 50,000 East Timorese refugees currently taking
shelter in neighboring East Nusa Tenggara to enter the
repatriation program.

A UNHCR representative in Indonesia, Bob White, said on
Wednesday that to promote the program, the world body had planned
a regular visit of East Timor people to the refugee camps
scattered across the Indonesian province and vice versa.

"We hope that through the exchange visits at least half of the
remaining refugees will return home by the end of the year,"
White said after a meeting with Governor Piet A. Tallo.

UNHCR will stop its humanitarian mission in West Timor at the
end of this year.

Provincial administration data has revealed that some 20,000
East Timorese were repatriated between September 2001 and June
2002.

White is visiting East Nusa Tenggara to talk with the
provincial administration about priority measures to deal with
the refugees, who have been taking shelter in the province for
almost three years.

"Technically, repatriation remains the most important of our
priority measures, although the possibility is wide open for the
Indonesian government to resettle the refugees," White said.

Indonesia has set an Aug. 31 deadline for the East Timorese to
choose between repatriation and resettlement.

The Office of the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare
and the Udayana Military Command have planned to build 800 houses
across East Nusa Tenggara for East Timor refugees who wish to
remain in the country.

Outgoing Udayana Military commander Maj. Gen. Willem T. da
Costa said on Tuesday that the houses would mostly go to families
of former East Timorese servicemen and civil servants.

"The construction project is aimed at accelerating the refugee
settlement program, which has continued unabated for almost three
years," said Willem, who will move to Bandung as the head of the
Army's staff and command school.

The houses will be built in Kupang, Belu, North Central Timor
and South Central Timor regencies.

Willem said 62 East Timorese who had joined the Army had
expressed their intention to leave Indonesia for their homeland.

Responding to reports of some 1,500 unreturned East Timorese
children, White said UNHCR was still working with both the
Indonesian and East Timor governments and nongovernmental
organizations to reunite them with their parents.

He said the world body had found it difficult to detect the
whereabouts of the children as they were scattered in various
places.

UNHCR has learned that the children have been placed in
orphanages across the country since 1999, when violence engulfed
the former Portuguese colony following the UN-administered
independence vote.