Indonesia Asks for U.N. Force to Calm E. Timor

President B. J. Habibie acknowledged Sunday that the Indonesian army is unable to restore peace in East Timor, and asked the United Nations to send an international peacekeeping force to the violence-torn territory.

Habibie’s announcement, made in a national TV address, represented a stunning reversal of policy and was a major breakthrough in international efforts to rein in military-backed militiamen who have been terrorizing the East Timorese since their Aug. 30 vote for independence.

“Too many people have lost their lives since the beginning of the unrest, lost their homes and security,” Habibie said. “We cannot wait any longer. We have to stop the suffering and mourning.”

The force’s composition and a timetable for its dispatch, however, remain unclear. Habibie said his foreign minister, Ali Abdullah Alatas, would leave for New York today to work out details with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The U.N. Security Council could authorize the international force as early as today, but Western diplomats did not discount the possibility that negotiations about specifics could be long and difficult and that Indonesia might be stalling for time.

Habibie, for instance, spoke of the force coming from “friendly nations,” and diplomats were unsure if that meant Indonesia was clinging to its preference for Asian troops.

Other open questions include what will happen to the militias and how Indonesia can allow the U.N. to return, knowing its staff would uncover evidence of massacres and widespread human rights abuses once it reestablishes a presence in the countryside.

Australia has offered to form the backbone of a peacekeeping force, providing 4,500 troops. Defense Minister John Moore said Sunday that 7,000 troops in all would be sufficient, assuming that the U.N. obtains the “total cooperation” of the Indonesian army. He said today that it would take at least a week after an agreement was signed in New York to get a peacekeeping force to East Timor.

In Auckland, New Zealand, where he is attending a summit of Pacific Rim economic leaders, President Clinton said this morning that he welcomed Habibie’s statement.

“No. 1, it’s important to get the details worked out and get this force in in a hurry, in a way that it can be effective,” Clinton said. “No. 2, if that happens, then we can resume our work with the people of Indonesia . . . to help their transition to democracy and the restoration of prosperity there.”

The Australians have asked the U.S. to provide “a limited but important function related to airlift, transportation, communications, intelligence and perhaps engineering work,” the president said. “All of that would require some presence on the ground in East Timor. But no one has asked for any combat troops.”

Clinton, who said the deployment will “require more extensive consultations” with Congress, added that the extent of the Indonesian military’s participation in such a force was also not immediately clear.

“That has to be worked out today,” he said. “But my view is that we should work with the Indonesians in a cooperative fashion. Perhaps they should have some parallel presence even. But they should not be able to say who is in or not in the force and what the structure of the force will be. Otherwise, it will raise all kinds of questions about whether there will be integrity in the force, and it will also delay the implementation.”

Despite international protests as violence increased, Indonesia had until Sunday insisted that it was capable of providing security in East Timor and had rejected calls for an international force. Habibie apparently switched course on the recommendation of his defense chief, Gen. Wiranto, who visited Dili, the territory’s capital, Saturday and hinted that foreign troops might be needed because not all of his orders were being obeyed.

Habibie told the nation that he was accepting the U.N.’s offer of help because, despite admirable efforts by the military to control the militias, “the situation is rapidly deteriorating.” U.N. officials and many Western governments have maintained that the violence has been orchestrated by the military itself.

“Since the imposition of martial law Sept. 7,” Habibie said, “we have tried to stabilize the situation, but I have to admit there are innumerable obstacles of a psychological nature, more so than of a military nature.”

Wiranto also spoke of “psychological” problems in the army after his brief trip to East Timor. His soldiers, he said, were so emotionally close to the anti-independence militias that the army had recruited, trained and paid that it had lost control over its own creation.

Habibie, a weak president disliked by the military, could not have made the decision to call in a foreign force without Wiranto’s backing, political analysts said. But with Wiranto admitting that he did not have full control over his troops in East Timor, it was unclear how commanders in the field would react. Many are dead set against giving independence to the former Portuguese colony, which Indonesia invaded in 1975 and annexed as a province the following year.

For the past two days, the Indonesian military reportedly has been shredding incriminating documents and blowing up bridges in East Timor in anticipation of leaving the territory.

Human rights organizations say the militia violence--which 15,000 army soldiers and 8,000 police in East Timor have made little attempt to stop--has claimed the lives of up to 20,000 people and turned 200,000 into refugees. The violence also forced the U.N. to withdraw from the territory, except for a skeleton staff of volunteers left behind in its Dili compound to protect refugees who fled there.

The international community welcomed Habibie’s announcement but expressed caution.

“I think the security mission was extremely and unexpectedly effective,” said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke. “But the devil is in the details, and we’ll see what happens when Alatas gets here and starts to negotiate.”

Human rights activists urged the international community to maintain the political and economic pressure that apparently led the government in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, to relent.

“We think it’s crucial that international sanctions, including cutoffs of military aid and the suspension of multilateral economic support, stay in place until the peacekeepers are fully operational on the ground, all the displaced people have returned home safely, and all the militia members mainly responsible for the violence are under arrest,” said Mike Jendrzejczyk of Human Rights Watch in Washington.

Jendrzejczyk also called it “crucial” that peacekeepers have the authority to disarm militia forces and any Indonesian soldiers actively working with them.

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Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the United Nations, Edwin Chen in Auckland and Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.