World community to help restore ruined Maluku

AMBON, Maluku (JP): The international community is ready to help Indonesia restore riot-torn Maluku, United Nations Development Program resident coordinator Ravi Rajan said here on Wednesday.

Ravi Rajan, who was in Ambon along with foreign envoys seeking information on conditions in the areas affected by unrest, said the international community was ready to help Indonesia with its reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation programs.

Asked about security on Ambon island and Central and North Maluku, Rajan said it was an internal affair of the government of Indonesia and foreign countries could not interfere.

When asked about funds the international bodies would donate for the reconstruction and rehabilitation programs, Rajan said that detailed talks on that would be held with foreign ambassadors here and representatives of international bodies.

Security guarantees for the personnel of international bodies working here was a must, he said.

Rajan visited Ambon with British ambassador Robin Christopher, Egyptian ambassador envoy Abdel Rahim Ismail Shalaby, Japanese deputy ambassador Jun Yamasaki, the Netherlands embassy's press spokesman BSM Berendsen, Phillip Clarke from the World Food Program and Andrew Harper from the United Nations High Commissioner. Indonesia's settlement and regional development minister Erna Witoelar accompanied the foreign envoys.

Meanwhile chief of Pattimura Military Command Brig. Gen. Max Tamaela told reporters that a special team had been formed to investigate the Huruku and Sameth riots on Jan. 23, which claimed 25 lives.

"There are indications that police and military officers became involved in the sectarian clashes," Tamaela said.

Tamaela's statements referred to reports from local people that officers from the Police Mobile Brigade unit and 303 Infantry Battalion were involved in the fighting.

According to Tamaela, the commander of the military subdistrict should have detected the movement of people before the fighting, which involved hundreds of people from four villages, took place. "How could hundreds of people moving from one place to another be undetected?"

When asked by journalists how his intelligence team failed to detect the early indications of rioting in the province, Tamaela merely said, "There was a weakness."

In a related development, the North Maluku legislature decided almost unanimously on Thursday to dismiss Sultan of Ternate, Mudaffar Syah, as chairman of the council. (49/sur)