UN force deployment to begin this weekend DESPITE a sharp deterioration in diplomatic relations between Australia and Indonesia over East Timor, Indonesia's military commander in the former Portuguese colony said yesterday his troops would begin pulling out when Australian-led UN forces arrived. "Once they get in, I will pull out. I hope the process will take not more than one week," said MajGen Kiki Syahnakri in the capital, Dili.
This promise was greeted with some relief in Darwin, where commanders of the multinational force which will begin deploying in East Timor this weekend had been preparing for the worst after Jakarta abruptly cancelled a military co-operation pact with Australia. However, it comes against a background of steadily worsening relations between the two powerful Asian neighbours.
The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, admitted yesterday that President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia had refused to take telephone calls from him for a week and the Australian media is full of speculation about a spy in Canberra feeding top-level information to Jakarta.
Also yesterday Indonesia failed to give clearance for the first humanitarian air drops of food and medicines to starving refugees in the East Timor mountains, according to Australia's Defence Minister, Mr John Moore. The first mission by Hercules planes had been scheduled for yesterday.
UN officials in Darwin said that some people had died from malnutrition among the 50,000 refugees gathered at Dare. UN officials managed to get to Dare yesterday with two trucks of rice from TNI (Indonesian military) stocks, said Mr David Wimhurst, spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). "Water is scarce and if there is no more food the situation will deteriorate further," he said.
East Timor's Indonesian commander said yesterday he expected an advance party from the International Force for East Timor (Interfet), to arrive in Dili tomorrow, followed by 2,500 troops on Monday.
"There will be 11 battalions, which will be pulled out when some of the UN troops arrive here and set up their command, because it will be dangerous if we pull out the troops before the UN is here," Indonesia's Gen Syahnakri told Reuters. There are an estimated 25,000 army and police personnel in East Timor.
Jakarta yesterday caused alarm in Darwin when it cancelled a 1995 security treaty with Canberra on military information exchanges, raising the prospect that Indonesian armed forces would not be co-operative with the multinational force. The Indonesian government cited Australia's allegedly pro-East Timor "attitude and actions" to explain its decision.
Mr Moore said Jakarta's decision to end the security pact meant some members of the Indonesian armed forces might not be very co-operative with the UN-sanctioned force. "But by `not co-operative' I don't mean aggressive," he said.
While Australian politicians played it down as a gesture to satisfy anti-Australian feeling in Indonesia, the Australian military reaction was uncompromising. "If we don't get the co-operation we need we will end up having to make this a tough military operation and that will be a tough challenge," the defence forces chief, Admiral Chris Barrie, said. "We will deliver on this mission, so let there be no doubt. We will not put a force in there with its arms held behind its back." The UN Security Council mandated the force to use "all necessary measures" to stop the violence in East Timor. Since East Timor voted by 78.5 per cent for independence on August 30th, pro-Jakarta militias backed by Indonesian soldiers have killed hundreds and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.
In Canberra the Australian commander of the intervention force, Maj Gen Peter Cosgrove, said that securing Dili and the city's abandoned UN headquarters would be a priority and he forecast that it would take several months to restore law and order in the territory.
His first step would be to seek out the local TNI senior officer to ensure that he understood the nature of the build-up of the forces, he said. "I'm led to believe that he's eagerly awaiting such a meeting."
In Dili, Gen Syahnakri said that "the situation is East Timor is still dangerous, I still cannot fully control it", but he added that "since the past three days there are no more fires . . . no more shootings". He said that more than 100,000 people had already left East Timor, and that there were another 138,000 waiting to leave.
The commander of Interfet's British contingent, Brig David Richards, expressed concern yesterday about Indonesian special forces disrupting the mission, but said he would have no problems co-operating with Indonesian forces accused of crimes.
Some 65 Nepalese ghurkhas in a contingent of 250 supplied by Britain flew into Darwin on a British VC-10 from Brunei yesterday to join Australian soldiers in the first wave of 2,000 coalition troops to be deployed in East Timor. The force will eventually include more than a dozen national contingents, including 50 Irish rangers.