Militia Members Reportedly Leaving E. Timor

Hundreds of anti-independence militiamen were pulling out of East Timor on Wednesday in the wake of the U.N. decision to send an international peacekeeping force to the violence-torn territory.

“It’s too early to say for sure this is an evacuation, but there is a lot of troop movement going on, all in the direction of West Timor,” said a senior U.N. official, referring to the neighboring Indonesian province.

Colin Stewart, one of 12 U.N. staff members still in Dili, the East Timor capital, told Agence France-Presse that the number of militia members seen in the city had declined in the past two days and that many were loading their personal possessions into trucks.

He spoke after Indonesian soldiers escorted him on an inspection of Dili. Another U.N. staff member was allowed by military authorities to visit the mountain village of Dare, where about 30,000 independence supporters have clustered after fleeing the territorial capital 10 miles away.

U.N. officials were encouraged, both by signs that militia members are withdrawing and by the cooperation shown by the Indonesian army--two elements that will be essential if the Australian-led force is to carry out peacekeeping rather than peacemaking duties.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the initial deployment of the international force could take place as early as this weekend, with troops from other nations joining the Australians. Indonesia still has more than 25,000 troops and police officers on duty in the territory.

Early today, Indonesia announced that it would unilaterally cancel its security pact with Australia because of Canberra’s outspoken comments over the East Timor catastrophe. But the move was not expected to affect Austrailia’s involvement in the peacekeeping mission.

In West Timor on Wednesday, Cancio Carvalho, commander of an anti-independence militia known as Live or Die for Integration, told reporters that his gunmen would not “create any problems” for the peacekeepers as long as the international force maintains neutrality. Carvalho and other militia leaders say U.N. personnel who organized the Aug. 30 referendum on East Timor’s future were biased in favor of independence supporters.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Abdullah Alatas, in New York to negotiate terms of the deployment, also said that neutrality was essential to the success of the mission. He said that the U.N.-authorized force will be in command of the situation on the ground, with Indonesian troops playing an advisory and liaison role.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 and annexed the following year, has been torn by militia violence since nearly 80% of registered voters opted to end their forced association with Indonesia. The death toll from the rampage may reach into the thousands. Aid workers say that 200,000 people--or one-fourth of the East Timorese--are now refugees.

Thousands of the refugees have sought safety from the marauding militias in East Timor’s mile-high mountains. Australia hoped to begin an airlift of food and emergency supplies to them today.

An aid worker in Kupang, the capital of West Timor, confirmed that truckloads of refugees, some escorted by armed guards, have been pouring across the border into the province. Others are arriving by boat and plane. An estimated 125,000 refugees are camped out in stadiums, tent cities and schools. There are shortages of water and latrines.

About 65,000 refugees have arrived in Atambua, a town of 12,000 people about seven miles from the border with East Timor, Sanjay Sojwal of World Vision said in a telephone interview.

Many of the militia members who terrorized the neighboring territory have moved to West Timor and taken control of refugee camps. They have stopped journalists from entering the camps, threatened and stoned foreign aid workers and kept visitors hostage in their hotels in Kupang.

In Atambua, some stores reportedly closed their doors after militia members demanded goods at gunpoint, Sojwal said. Others closed because they could not get supplies.

Vehicles stolen in East Timor, including U.N. vehicles, have begun showing up in West Timor, sources said. Police have begun checking all cars with East Timor license plates and confiscating weapons. Indonesian television showed footage of police displaying their cache of seized arms, which included submachine guns and machetes.

Wealthier families from East Timor who have good connections with the militias have taken their possessions across the border, and some even evacuated their livestock. One family reportedly arrived in a truck with its cows.

But the majority of the refugees are poor corn farmers who fled with nothing but their clothes and some sacks of food. In the frenzied flight from East Timor, family members have become separated. In the village of Kupata, refugees can be seen clustered around public telephones making calls to track down missing relatives, Sojwal said.

Many refugees are traumatized by the violence they have suffered. And many are angry at the United Nations, which they feel betrayed them by organizing the referendum and then failing to protect them from the savage retribution of the anti-independence militias, Sojwal said.

World Vision has 2,000 survival kits for families, ready to be shipped into the refugee camps today, Sojwal said. Each kit contains a water bucket, soap and detergent, sarongs, plates, eating utensils and a cooking pot. The agency also has 400 tons of rice that can be distributed if transportation can be found. The need is critical: Many refugees are likely to run out of the food they brought with them in a week.

The Indonesian government maintains that the refugees in West Timor want to remain a part of the nation. It says that within two months, the refugees will be resettled in other provinces and on other islands. The government, Indonesian sources said, has no plans to help them return to East Timor.

“If these refugees do not want to return to East Timor, we cannot force them to do so,” Transmigration Minister Hendro Priyono said in Kupang, according to Antara, the official Indonesian news agency. “They are all citizens of Indonesia.”