Jakarta – The chief of the UN Mission in East Timor asked the Indonesian armed forces on Wednesday to rein in pro-Indonesian militia before a planned vote on self-determination there next month.
"I have asked ... for actions to be taken to ensure that pro-integration militias are no longer able to operate in a way that is threatening to our personnel and to others," Ian Martin said after an hour-long meeting with armed forces chief General Wiranto at his headquarters here.
UNAMET teams in three outposts have been pulled back because of militia harassment and a militia attacked a humanitarian aid convoy Sunday.
Martin said he had called on Wiranto to take "a number of measures" including action against "those known to be responsible for attacks in the districts of Maliana and Liquisa.
"He [Wiranto] again expressed very strongly his personal commitment to ensuring the success of the consultation process and he made the point that it depends also on the political leadership of the East Timorese," he said.
In earlier statements Martin said the militia attacks had a "disturbing pattern" and the lack of Indonesian police action to halt the convoy attack was "inexcusable."
Martin also "categorically" denied suggestions that UNAMET personnel in the convoy had carried or fired weapons. "Our civilian police have extensively interviewed not only our own personnel but the NGO workers and others in the convoy and were quite sure that the only shots that were fired were fired from the Besi Merah Putih militias," he said.
In the East Timor capital of Dili UNAMET spokesman Hiro Ueki said Indonesian police had alleged that shots were fired from a UNAMET vehicle during Sunday's militia attack in Liquisa. Police also alleged that members of the Falintil – the armed wing of the East Timorese pro-independence movement – were in the convoy, and that a gun was seen pointing from inside one of the cars, which was found later in a police search of the vehicle.
Deputy military spokesman Brigadier General Sudrajat told reporters after the Martin-Wiranto meeting that a fresh batch of 1,200 police personnel would be sent to East Timor along with vehicles. He did not give a date but said a similar number of army troops would be pulled out from the territory.
Ueki said one UN car was repeatedly hit with sticks, machetes and rocks. Its rear windshield and side windows were smashed and the passengers were attacked by the militia.
"Within minutes of arrival at the Liquisa police station, the UNAMET officer who was driving the car handed to the police a homemade pistol which had been dropped into the car by one of the attackers who was on the outside of the car," Ueki said. "The gun was not found during a search of the vehicle by police officers, it was handed to the police by the UNAMET officer voluntarily."
East Timor police chief Colonel Timbul Silaen on Monday quoted reports as saying police in Liquisa, 30 kilometres west of Dili, had confiscated a gun from a UNAMET official in the convoy.
Silaen was also quoted by the Antara state news agency as saying a witness had said he had been shot at by someone inside a UNAMET vehicle.
A driver was seriously injured and six people are missing after the attack on the truck convoy returning to Dili after delivering aid to a refugee-filled village.
The attack has raised concerns at the United Nations of a further delay a UN-organized poll on the future of the Indonesian-ruled territory.
UN chief Kofi Annan will determine on July 13 whether security conditions permit the poll to go ahead in August, two weeks later than originally planned.
Martin was also due to meet Foreign Minister Ali Alatas later Wednesday, Ueki said. But a foreign ministry source said Alatas would be busy addressing a parliamentary session and since Martin's visit was focused on security issues, there was no need for the two to meet.
In next month's ballot East Timorese will be asked whether they want the former Portuguese territory, annexed by Jakarta in 1976, to remain part of Indonesia or to become independent.