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East Timor 'needs help' a year on

Source
BBC News - February 11, 2009

One year after the near-fatal shooting of East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta, the country's foreign minister has admitted it still needs help.

He made the comments during discussions with his counterparts from Australia and Portugal, who also acknowledged that more needed to be done.

The International Crisis Group recently released a report on East Timor, saying security had considerably improved. But it accused Mr Horta of damaging the rule of law by pardoning rebels. It said the government had been buying off potential troublemakers, and that the necessary reforms to the security sector had still not taken place.

"Ramos-Horta's interventions in the process of justice... send a signal that those involved in political violence – especially the political elite and the army – will not be held to account," the ICG said.

Mr da Costa described the report as "unfair". "The international community has to acknowledge the efforts that the government has made and what we have done so far to improve in such a short time – in less than a year – the situation in the country," Mr da Costa said.

"We still need to consolidate the justice sector [and] the finance sector," he conceded. "It has to be said that when Indonesians left the country, the country had to be built from scratch."

Improvements

The BBC's correspondent Lucy Williamson says that in the capital Dili, appearances have improved significantly.

The refugee camps which dotted the city after the violence in 2006 have largely gone; the soldiers who deserted from the army have returned – and been given compensation; the streets are calm; businesses open; new construction projects under way.

But deep-seated problems have yet to be tackled. Our correspondent says the violence that swept East Timor in 2006 was sparked by political interference in the country's armed forces and opened up historic tensions between Timorese from the East and West of the country.

Thousands of UN police and foreign soldiers remain in the country nearly seven years after it gained formal independence from Indonesia.

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