Gde Anugrah Arka, Jakarta – The UN's human rights chief visited an East Timor massacre site on Saturday and was told by victims' families an international tribunal was needed to examine human rights violations in the former Indonesia province.

On her second trip to East Timor since the territory voted to break from Jakarta's harsh rule in a UN-sponsored referendum in August 1999, Mary Robinson had on Friday condemned the trials Indonesia was holding over atrocities in East Timor in 1999 and said she would take her concerns to the UN Security Council.

A United Nations spokeswoman told Reuters on Saturday that Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, had visited Ave Maria Church in the town of Suai near the Indonesian border, where 27 people were killed in a massacre just days after the independence vote.

Asked earlier about the aim of the visit, the spokeswoman said: "She has been following the situation here for quite a long time, for more than three years now, and she wants to get back here [to help decide] what she really wants to do."

Relatives angry

An East Timorese who was part of the delegation visiting the massacre site said Robinson, on a two-day visit to East Timor as part of a final trip to Asia before leaving office next month, spent about three hours in the border town holding meetings with relatives of the victims.

"The people expressed their anger, they expressed their concerns on the results of Jakarta's ad hoc tribunals and because in the people's views [that] justice has not been done, they [proposed] the possibility of setting up international tribunals," said the East Timorese, who declined to be named.

Jakarta's special human rights court last week delivered the first verdicts in a string of cases linked to the carnage, largely blamed on pro-Jakarta militia backed by elements of the Indonesian army. The UN estimates more than 1,000 people were killed in the violence.

The Jakarta court acquitted a former East Timor police chief and five other security officers of crimes against humanity, and gave an ex-governor a jail sentence far shorter than prosecutors requested. The results were criticised as a whitewash by human rights groups and also drew fire from the United States government.

First verdicts

Robinson also travelled to the coastal town of Liquica on Saturday to hear the first public confessions from perpetrators of the East Timor violence, part of events facilitated by the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

"One of them, a former member of a militia gang, confessed he took part in the burning of a house and was carrying a gun everywhere he went. He just came back from West Timor in July," commission chairman Anisetto Guteres told Reuters by telephone from Dili. He quoted Robinson as saying she was "very impressed" with the reconciliation efforts.

Robinson's August 18-25 trip precedes her handing over her job to Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian veteran of the UN refugee agency and former head of the UN administration in East Timor. Before coming to East Timor, Robinson visited China and Cambodia.

Robinson had previously expressed concern over last week's verdict, saying prosecutors had presented the killings and rights violations "as the result of spontaneous conflict" between the armed East Timorese factions rather than as part of a "widespread or systematic pattern of violence".

The former Portuguese territory was declared formally independent in May this year when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan handed over power to former guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao in an emotion-charged ceremony.