U.N. Heeds Staff’s Pleas, Postpones Withdrawal : E. Timor: Workers in compound fear remaining refugees would be killed.

Threatened with a staff mutiny, the United Nations postponed by 24 hours Wednesday plans to pull out of East Timor, in the fear that 2,000 refugees huddled in its Dili compound would be slaughtered.

The delay was announced after the 300 or so foreign and Indonesian U.N. representatives in the besieged Dili compound signed a petition to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, begging to stay to protect the refugees. The evacuation is now scheduled to begin Friday morning.

Western diplomats hoped that the delay would enable the U.N. to negotiate security guarantees for the refugees. They also hoped it might give a U.N. Security Council delegation in Jakarta a chance to persuade the Indonesia government to accept foreign peacekeepers in the violence-torn province.

Amid reports that rampaging gangs and militiamen are slaughtering civilians in East Timor with at least the acquiescence of Indonesian troops and police, Annan appealed twice on the phone to President B.J. Habibie. The Indonesian leader resisted calls for outside military intervention and told Annan that fresh Indonesian troops were being sent to the province to quell the violence.

The U.N.’s plans for its mission in Dili called for a handful of volunteer police and military officers to remain behind to try to ensure the safety of the 2,000 terrified East Timorese who have sought shelter in the compound and a neighboring church in the downtown.

“We are not only concerned about our staff. We are concerned about the East Timorese,” the secretary-general said after attending emergency consultations of the Security Council in New York. “That is why I am taking measures to try and see if we can thin out rather than withdraw completely.”

The U.N. compound in Dili, short of food and water, has been under siege since the East Timorese people voted overwhelmingly Aug. 30 to reject Habibie’s offer of autonomy within Indonesia in favor of independence. Over the past week, the U.N. has been forced to abandon its compounds throughout the province, one by one, in the wake of attacks by the militia gunmen.

Much of Dili, a city of 200,000 people, has been sacked and burned, and dozens of villages in the province emptied of their populations.

The rampage has been carried out under the passive watch of Indonesian troops and police officers, many of whom share the militias’ opposition to independence. There have been reports that soldiers and police have joined the looting and violence, though the claims are difficult to corroborate because foreign observers increasingly have been driven from the province.

“We no longer have eyes and ears throughout East Timor,” U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Wednesday in New York. “I don’t know that anyone has a good fix on what is going on.”

Witnesses who ventured into the deserted streets of Dili on Wednesday said Indonesian soldiers were “looting everything in sight,” carrying furniture out of abandoned houses and loading it onto trucks.

“They are trying to kill all the educated people so we cannot develop our country,” said a pro-independence activist who reached the U.N. compound. “This is a goodbye operation.”

U.N. officials estimate that as many as 200,000 people--a quarter of East Timor’s population--have fled their homes in the past week. Antara, the official Indonesian news agency, said 60,000 refugees had crossed the border into the province of West Timor. One refugee told of seeing the heads of independence supporters on sticks along the road.

“I don’t know what the death toll is,” pro-independence leader Jose Alexandre “Xanana” Gusmao said in Jakarta on Wednesday. “But I am quite certain what is happening there is horrifying.”

In New York, the U.N. chief said that Indonesian forces had “failed totally to maintain law and order,” though Habibie had assured him that fresh troops would replace apparently rogue army units in East Timor and “things are going to be different.”

“Will it happen? I don’t know,” Annan said.

Just how much leverage Habibie has in the face of the military’s reluctance so far to curb the militias--which many observers believe were organized by the armed forces--is a major unanswered question at U.N. headquarters.

Habibie’s position has become so shaky that Defense Minister Gen. Wiranto on Wednesday was forced to publicly deny rumors that Habibie was about to be removed from office in a military-inspired coup.

The widespread rumors had Habibie being replaced by a three-man team that would remain in place until the national assembly met in October or November.

Five Security Council representatives, led by Namibia’s U.N. ambassador, Martin Andjaba, were scheduled to meet with Indonesia’s president today in Jakarta to urge him to accept outside peacekeepers.

“Council members expressed the gravest concern at the deteriorating security situation,” said Ambassador Arnold Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands, the Security Council’s president. He warned that the council “will need to consider further action” if Habibie’s government does not move quickly to end the violence.

But to a significant degree, it was a warning without teeth.

U.N. officials said it was doubtful that the council would support sending international troops to Indonesia without an invitation. “We do not send missions to countries unless we have been invited to do so,” Van Walsum said.

Antonio Monteiro, Portugal’s ambassador to the U.N., called for the immediate dispatch of international peacekeepers to East Timor, invitation or not. But his was a lonely voice in the halls of the United Nations. Members of the Security Council and the government of Australia, which is organizing a potential peacekeeping force of 7,000 soldiers, both want the consent of Indonesia.

The planned evacuation of most U.N. staff members to Darwin, Australia, was likely to only deepen Indonesia’s crisis and cost the Habibie government more international credibility. To most political analysts, it was clear that the generals, not Habibie, were ultimately in charge of the government.

The original decision to withdraw most U.N. personnel from Dili came after a convoy escorted by Indonesian troops traveled from the U.N.’s downtown compound to retrieve supplies from a waterfront warehouse.

“They were confronted by militia who pulled the U.N. driver from one of the vehicles and threatened him,” said Eckhard, the U.N. spokesman. “The military advised the U.N. personnel to return to their compound before they were killed by the militia.”

Goldman reported from the United Nations and Lamb from Jakarta. Associated Press contributed to this report.