Why this delay of trials?

East Timor trial in three months. So ran the main headline of The Jakarta Post on Feb. 17, 2000. Attorney General Marzuki Darusman was quoted as saying that trials of those accused of involvement in the campaign of terror and destruction in East Timor last year would begin within that time frame. "Within three to four weeks there will be a number of suspects named", he said.

It is now fully five months since that statement. Is it too much to ask what is going on? Is it too much to ask for an explanation for the delay? Some may dismiss this as a minor case of water-treading. It is not. It concerns a case on which Indonesia has expended much political capital, not to mention nationalist self-righteousness in the belief that it can bring to account those responsible for a range of crimes against humanity that could, it may be forcefully argued, include genocide -- "destruction in whole or in part of a people or nation", as defined by the Geneva Conventions and international customary law.

It is all too easy to imagine the types of obstruction, not to mention downright deception, that the Attorney General's team may be encountering. This, however, is not an excuse for the Attorney General's office not to issue a "state of progress assessment".

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta