Lindsay Murdoch and Mark Dodd, Jakarta – Pro-Indonesian forces vowed yesterday to stage an "invade Dili" rally in the East Timorese capital on Saturday after Timorese independence leader Xanana Gusmao refused to back away from a call for his supporters to take up arms to defend themselves.
Mr Basillo Araujo, a spokesman for groups opposing independence for East Timor, said his supporters would also protest at a public Mass scheduled for Sunday by the head of the Catholic Church in the former Portuguese territory, Bishop Carlos Belo.
Gusmao yesterday accused the Indonesian military of deliberately derailing peace talks on the troubled territory's future and said supporters should take up arms and protect themselves from pro-Indonesian paramilitary violence.
"This strategy, aimed at blocking the New York negotiations, has been built on the blood of the defenceless people of East Timor," Gusmao said in a statement released by his lawyers yesterday.
"I am obliged to continue to ask that the defenceless people of East Timor refuse to allow themselves to be slaughtered like animals, although I know that no-one will stop the murderous bullets, although I know that ABRI (military) will keep on supporting the militias."
His comments defied a threat by the Indonesian Justice Minister Muladi on Monday to move Gusmao out of de facto house arrest and back to jail if he did not publicly retract an earlier call for East Timorese to defend themselves. Gusmao's statement came as the first comprehensive investigation into last week's alleged massacre of villagers at Liquica, west of the East Timorese capital Dili, detailed 62 killings and 14 disappearances over two days.
The foundation lists the names of 57 people killed on April 6 when Indonesian security forces and a paramiltary group surrounded the church before attackers wielding machetes and bows and arrows went on a killing spree after the firing of tear gas. Five others had been killed the previous day.
It cited witness reports that on the morning after the attack six trucks took the bodies along a road west of Liquica to a lake where they were to be dumped.
The foundation also details a massacre at Ermera, 35 kilometres south-east of Dili, last Monday, saying it had information 14 people had been killed.
The Indonesian armed forces has confirmed a shoot-out in Ermera on the same day but denies the massacre claim. It says its soldiers had been attacked by pro-independence guerillas. PETER COLE-ADAMS reports from Canberra: The Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General Frank Hickling, yesterday flatly rejected any move to reorganise the defence force to specialise in peacekeeping.
"I have seen the results of a peacekeeping culture in several armies in recent years," he said. "Those are not the kind of army that this country needs. They are not the kind of army that will earn the respect that are the foundation of successful peacekeeping. And they are not the sort of army that I want to be part of."
General Hickling told the National Press Club that the army's focus must remain the delivery of war-fighting capabilities. "To aim at anything less would be an insult to our people in uniform and a betrayal of the nation," he said.