United Nations – Indonesia rejected Nobel Peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta's call for an international war crimes tribunal for East Timor, saying it wants to bring those responsible for last year's deadly rampage to justice and does not need outside help.
"I think our stance is clear that, as a sovereign nation, we can handle our problems by ourselves," Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab said on late Thursday. "We don't need any international tribunal as long as we can prove to the whole world that we can stand up to the responsibility of bringing to justice the perpetrators – those who violate human rights."
East Timorese independence leader Ramos-Horta told a news conference earlier on Thursday that the time had come for the Security Council to establish an international war crimes tribunal for East Timor because Indonesia had lost all credibility in bringing those responsible to justice.
Mr Alwi said that it was "an exaggeration" to say Indonesia's credibility had been destroyed, noting that the government had said it would welcome UN prosecutors to visit Jakarta to question militia leader Eurico Guteres about two massacres last year.
The minister held a news conference after reporting to the Security Council on the probe into the killing of three UN aid workers in West Timor, the disarming of militias blamed for their deaths, and the restoration of security to refugee camps. Last month, Indonesia barred a Security Council mission from visiting West Timor to look into Jakarta's progress on these issues.
Mr Alwi invited council ambassadors to visit West Timor in the week of November 13 "to see with their own eyes what has been achieved by the Indonesian government with regard to solving the problem", but he stressed it was a trip to observe, not investigate. "Security is under control," he said, and the government would like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which pulled out after the September slaying of the aid workers, to return.
US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said Jakarta had taken "an important step in the right direction" by arresting Guteres and inviting the council to West Timor. But he said US concerns about the refugees, the Indonesian army's support for the militias, and Jakarta's failure to disarm the militia, had not abated.