Agence France Presse in Jakarta – The Government yesterday moved to convince the international community, including Jakarta's main donors, of its determination to resolve the violence and refugee problems in West Timor.

Authorities yesterday sent a large taskforce to the province to speed up the repatriation or resettlement of some 130,000 East Timorese still in refugee camps.

The Government also said it had invited the UN Security Council to send a delegation as police announced the arrest of a seventh suspect for the murders of three UN relief workers in West Timor last month.

A 47-member team of officials from 16 ministries and police and military agencies flew to the West Timor border town of Atambua from an air force base in East Jakarta early yesterday. Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the team's main task was to re-register the tens of thousands of East Timorese refugees to determine who wanted to return home and who wanted to remain in Indonesia.

The refugees are the last of about 250,000 East Timorese who were forced across the border into West Timor when militias rampaged through East Timor last year, after the territory's overwhelming vote for independence.

"Indonesia is not playing around with this matter. For me, the solution to the refugee problems must not be delayed due to an international political problem," General Susilo said. He said the team would also further investigate the killings of the three UN refugee workers in Atambua on September 6 by rampaging militiamen opposed to independence.

International pressure has mounted on Jakarta since the killings to disarm and disband the pro-Jakarta militias who have lived among the refugees in squalid camps in West Timor and other parts of East Nusa Tenggara for the past 13 months.

General Susilo said Jakarta's invitation to a UN Security Council delegation to visit West Timor would enable observers to witness "the disarmament process, the investigation [of the UN workers murders] and the preparatory steps for the re-registration" of refugees. Indonesia had previously stalled on any such visit, saying it was not the right time and would not help solve the problems in West Timor.

Announcing the arrest of a seventh suspect in the murders of the UN workers, the police chief in the West Timorese border district of Belu, Superintendent S. M. Simatupang, said the man was a member of the pro-Indonesia East Timorese community in West Timor.