Washington – Senior US government officials are actively considering steps, including moving to postpone next month's donors' meeting for Indonesia, if the government of President Abdurrahman Wahid does not follow through on a pledge to disarm militia forces in West Timor and take strong measures to improve a deteriorating human-rights situation throughout the archipelago.
US officials, led by Pentagon chief William Cohen who visited Jakarta last week, have warned their Indonesian counterparts in unusually blunt language that they are prepared to cut off all but humanitarian aid if certain minimal steps are not taken right away, particularly in West Timor where army-backed militia killed three UN relief workers during a rampage earlier this month.
As Cohen was speaking, the Pentagon confirmed that it had suspended military-to-military ties with Indonesia just five months after they had resumed.
The murders prompted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to withdraw all 400 UN staff from West Timor, leaving some 120,000 East Timorese, who were forced to flee there last year, at the mercy of the militias and their army sponsors. Red Cross officials who have remained in the camps warned this week that food would run short by the end of the month in the absence of more UN relief.
Indonesian authorities, who this week said they had arrested six militia members in connection with the killings, have promised to disarm and disband the militias if they have not voluntarily turned in their weapons by next Monday, September 25.
That pledge, which was made to the UN Security Council this week, was repeated to US officials by Wahid's coordinating minister for political and security affairs, Bambong Yudhoyono, who flew directly to Washington from New York for high-level talks.
But whether Jakarta will actually follow through remains subject to serious doubt among US officials here who see both Wahid and Yudhoyono as well-intentioned but unable to exercise effective control over local military commanders.
"It's not even clear if the top brass in Jakarta really have control over their own army," said one administration official who added that the formal chain of command within the military appears to have broken down in the wake of last year's UN intervention in East Timor after the militias, with military support, virtually razed the former Portuguese colony.
In addition to disarming the militias and prosecuting those responsible for the murders of the UN staff, Washington is demanding that Indonesia permit the UN Security Council to send a mission to West Timor to assess the general security situation in West Timor and permit the East Timorese there to return home.
"We look for results, not just rhetoric," said a State Department spokesman who noted the government has long promised to disarm the militias without following up. "We're encouraged that the government has for the first time set a timetable for dealing with the militias."
Indonesia, which has yet to recover from Asia's devastating financial crisis in 1997-98, is particularly dependent on external aid at the moment, so the threat of an aid suspension, which was first raised by World Bank President James Wolfensohn in a letter to Wahid shortly after the militia murders, is seen as a major threat. The Bank convenes and chairs the meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI), where both multilateral and bilateral donors pledge assistance for the coming year.
"If that didn't get their attention, nothing will," said one US official. "I would ask you to do your utmost to stop the violence before any more innocent lives are lost," Wolfensohn wrote in a letter delivered to Wahid, who was in New York for the UN's Millennium Summit 10 days ago.
Adding that he hoped to be report to the donors that the violence had ended and that the refugees were being permitted to return to East Timor, Wolfensohn noted that "[this] issue is being watched closely by the international community."
The letter was leaked to the Washington Post, and Bank officials confirmed the accuracy of the quotations. The Bank Friday sent out formal invitations to the CGI, which is scheduled for October 18-19 in Tokyo, but there is no certainty that it will take place then. If the army fails to move decisively against the militias after Monday, the Clinton administration is likely to try to put off the meeting, although European donors and Japan are more reluctant to take such strong action, according to knowledgeable sources.
For his part, Cohen, who has defended a rapprochement between the Pentagon and the Indonesian army since last May, was unusually direct in his remarks. "Failure [to disband the militias]," he warned last weekend, "will have consequences for Jakarta's relations with the international community and it could in fact jeopardize continued economic assistance."
Several activist groups and the East Timorese government, which generally has pursued a conciliatory policy toward Indonesia since Jakarta's withdrawal one year ago, already are urging a delay in the CGI meeting.
On September 12, the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) called for putting it off until Jakarta dismantles the militias and arrests all those responsible for the violence there and for recent infiltrations into East Timor, and permits East Timorese in West Timor to return home.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) added its voice on September 20, insisting that the CGI delay its meeting until specific conditions are met; among them, an independent investigation into the killing of the UN staff; clear steps toward disbanding the militia "in a way that does not simply export the thuggery to another location"; and the arrests and beginning of trials against 19 officers and militia leaders identified last month by the Attorney-General as suspects in last year's rampage in East Timor.
"We've had enough promises," said Sidney Jones, HRW's Asia director and an Indonesia expert in her own right, "Now we want results." While Timor is currently the focus of US and activist concern, continuing violence elsewhere in Indonesia, particularly recent high-profile killings in restive Aceh province, an important oil-and gas-producing region, has also become worrisome.
Last month, a US-based and well-respected human-rights activist, Jafar Siddiq disappeared in Medan in northern Sumatra. His badly mutilated body turned up with those of four other victims two weeks ago under circumstances which activists here believe implicate the security forces.
On September 16, a prominent academic and university rector, Safwan Idris, was assassinated at his home by gunmen who, according to still unconfirmed reports, were linked to the Mobile Brigade police forces in Aceh. Idris, a scholar on Islam, had served on an independent commission set up by the government to investigate past atrocities and abuses by the military in Aceh and was considered a leading candidate for Aceh's governorship. No arrests have been reported.