U.S. backed RI invasion of East Timor, documents show

U.S. backed RI invasion of East Timor, documents show

Agence France-Presse, Washington

The United States knew well in advance of and explicitly approved
Indonesia's invasion of East Timor (currently Timor Leste) in
1975, which led to a brutal 24-year occupation of the former
Portuguese colony, according to newly declassified documents.

Released last week by the independent Washington-based
National Security Archive (NSA), the documents showed U.S.
officials were aware of the invasion plans nearly a year in
advance.

They adopted a "policy of silence" and even sought to suppress
news and discussions on East Timor, including credible reports of
Indonesia's massacres of Timorese civilians, according to the
documents.

East Timor is today an independent nation. The people of East
Timor voted in favor of breaking away from Indonesia in a UN-
sponsored ballot in August 1999 before gaining full independence
in May 2002 after more than two years of UN stewardship.

But the path to independence was bloody. Militia gangs
reportedly directed by Indonesia's military went on a killing
spree before and after the East Timorese referendum, killing
about 1,400 independence supporters.

Thirty years after the Indonesian invasion, the formerly
secret U.S. documents showed how multiple U.S. administrations
tried to conceal information on East Timor to avoid a controversy
that would prompt a Congressional ban on weapons sales to
Indonesia.

"I'm assuming you're really going to keep your mouth shut on
the subject," then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger told
his staff in October 1975 in response to reports that Indonesia
had begun its attack on East Timor.

The administration of President Gerald Ford knew that
Indonesia had invaded East Timor using almost entirely U.S.
equipment, and that the use of that equipment for that purpose
was illegal, the documents showed.

In 1977, officials of the administration of Ford's successor,
Jimmy Carter, blocked declassification of an explosive cable
transcribing President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger's
meeting with Indonesian President Soeharto.

At the meeting in December 1975, they explicitly approved of
the East Timor invasion, according to the documents.

Through the 1980s, U.S. officials continued to receive -- and
deny or dismiss -- credible reports of Indonesia's massacres of
Timorese civilians.

The National Security Archive had provided more than 1,000
formerly classified U.S. documents to help an East Timorese
commission of inquiry into human rights abuses that occurred
between 1975 and 1999.

East Timor President Xanana Gusmao handed the commission's
2,500-page report to the Timorese Parliament last Monday but
wanted it withheld from the public, amid an outcry from
opposition politicians and rights activists.

Brad Simpson, Director of the National Security Archive's
Indonesia and East Timor documentation project, said he expected
the commission's final report to show that Indonesia's invasion
of East Timor and resulting crimes there "occurred in an
international context in which the support of powerful nations,
especially the United States, was indispensable."

"These documents also point to the need for genuine
international accountability for East Timor's suffering," he
said.