Indonesia made an apparently inadvertent admission yesterday that East Timor's separatist rebel strength exceeds "200 at the most", as it has been saying for years, David Shanks writes.
The Indonesian Information Minister, Mr Yunus Yosfiah, told reporters that the armed forces commander, Gen Wiranto, had reported at a cabinet meeting that some 220 "followers" of FALINTIL, the rebel army, had come down from the mountains on June 26th and another 1,000 "members of FALINTIL" were expected to follow. Mr Yunus, a former military man of some notoriety, said this happened in Suai town, in the south of Timor. The Suai district is by no means the strongest rebel area. If others, particularly the eastern end of the territory, are taken into account resistance claims of a strength of several thousand seem more plausible.
The minister also quoted Gen Wiranto as saying that the military had been successful in collecting weapons from pro- and anti-Jakarta groups. This too is strange as Article 4 of the May 5th UN accord on holding the referendum gives "sole responsibility" for law and order to the police, not the military.