Irwan Firdaus, Atambua – Hundreds of gun-toting militiamen staged a show of force Friday in a West Timor village where UN officials fear the militants killed 20 people despite Indonesia's promises to impose control in the territory.
Reports of new slayings came as Indonesia's embattled president tried to reassure world leaders at the United Nations about the situation in West Timor, where UN workers said militiamen were terrorizing the populace and refugees.
UN officials in East Timor said there were reports that militiamen went on a rampage in Betun village on Thursday that left 20 people dead. The reports of 20 dead could not be confirmed independently.
All UN workers fled West Timor after a militia-led mob stormed UN offices in Atambua, 30 miles north of Betun, on Wednesday, slaughtering three foreign relief workers and three other people.
Indonesian army officers said only that 11 people had died in a clash between militiamen and villagers near Betun, 18 miles from the border between West Timor and UN-administered East Timor.
The UN Security Council insisted Friday that Indonesia immediately disarm and disband the militias who killed the UN workers and bring those responsible to justice.
In a unanimously adopted resolution, the council condemned Wednesday's attacks and said it was outraged at reports of further attacks. "We have ample evidence that the threat is increasing," US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said before the vote. "We must face facts. The Indonesian military, or to be more precise, elements within the Indonesian military, are directly or indirectly responsible for these outrages."
In New York, President Abdurrahman Wahid said his government had sent a battalion of troops to West Timor and that he had asked the United Nations for funds to relocate militamen from the province to other parts of Indonesia. "Everything is under control," Wahid told a news conference Friday on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit. "The situation now is going very well."
The militias are the same gangs that, with backing from elements in the Indonesian military, wreaked destruction in East Timor after residents there voted for independence in an August 1999 referendum. Militiamen were pushed into the western part of Timor island when UN peacekeepers took control in the east.
On Friday, about 1,000 militiamen, some dressed in Indonesian military uniforms and brandishing guns and machetes, gathered in Betun for the funeral of one of their commanders killed earlier in the week.
Militia chiefs at the gathering demanded East Timorese leaders allow the militiamen to return to East Timor or face all-out war. "I think it is quite evident that Indonesian authorities are not in control in West Timor," said Norwegian Col. Brynar Nymo, spokesman for UN peacekeepers in the East Timorese capital, Dili.
On roads throughout the region, militiamen set up blockades, extorting money and cigarettes from passing motorists and searching cars for any remaining foreigners.
In Dili, UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Bernard Kerblat said West Timorese locals and refugees from the east were living in fear in areas under militiamen's control. "There are 120,000 individuals in a hostage-like situation" because of the militias, he said.