Gurkhas Join Australians on E. Timor Force

Nearly 300 British Gurkha riflemen arrived here Thursday to join an international peacekeeping force in the final stages of preparation for deployment to violence-torn East Timor.

The Gurkhas, an elite unit of Nepalese based in Brunei, are the first soldiers from another nation to link up with Australian units, which will lead the international force on what commanders acknowledge could be a dangerous mission.

“For Australia, this is going to give us a real challenge,” Adm. Chris Barrie, chief of Australian Defense Forces, said at a news conference here Thursday. “It is our most significant military undertaking since World War II.”

Military officials said advance elements of the force, which eventually will number about 7,000, were expected to leave this weekend for East Timor’s capital, Dili, a 90-minute flight from Darwin on C-130 Hercules transport planes. The Jervis Bay, a troop-carrying Australian catamaran, can reach Dili in 10 hours.

The final composition of the U.N.-sanctioned force remains unclear, Australian army sources said, but more than 20 countries have offered to contribute personnel or assistance.

In Washington, President Clinton ordered about 200 U.S. military personnel to join the peacekeeping operation, saying the Americans will take part in “a limited but essential way.”

The Americans won’t be armed for possible combat, but will help handle planning, communications, intelligence-gathering and logistics--including flights of heavy cargo. About half the force will be in East Timor and the remainder offshore, Clinton said.

The U.S. may consider requests for more personnel, Navy Adm. Scott Fry, a senior operations official for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon. “The door has got to stay open,” he said.

East Timor, a Connecticut-sized former Portuguese colony seized by Indonesia in 1975 and annexed the following year, has been terrorized by anti-independence militias since the electorate voted overwhelmingly Aug. 30 to split from Indonesia and form a nation.

Australia will be the backbone of INTERFET--the International Force for East Timor--and will provide 4,500 soldiers, 89 armored-personnel carriers, 53 light tanks, 45 helicopters and five patrol boats, all backed by a squadron of F/A-18 Hornet jets on call--formidable opposition to militia gunmen who have been attacking unarmed civilians in the territory with impunity.

“I think the best thing for the militias would be to surrender their weapons and become peaceful law-abiding East Timorese,” Maj. Gen. Peter Cosgrove, the Australian commander of INTERFET and a hero of the Vietnam War, told reporters. “If this is not to their liking, then maybe they need to leave East Timor.”

Cosgrove’s force has a U.N. mandate to use “all necessary measures” to restore peace in East Timor. Military analysts said this could include the right to shoot first if the situation warrants it.

“We have been given an extremely powerful mandate,” said a U.N. official in New York. “But just because you have that mandate doesn’t mean you have to use it.

“This is not a ‘victor-vanquished’ operation,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “This is not about imposing draconian rule on people. This is about cooperating with Indonesia and together solving this problem and achieving reconciliation. The strong mandate is an extremely important dissuading element.”

Australian intelligence officers were carefully monitoring troop movements in East Timor on Thursday. They said some army and militia units were withdrawing from the territory and that the dreaded Kopassus special forces--whose commanders are widely accused of planning a scorched-earth policy in East Timor that led to the militia violence against independence supporters--had been pulled out entirely.

On Thursday, the Indonesian commander in Dili said his force would withdraw from the territory soon after peacekeepers arrive. “Once they get in, I will pull out,” Maj. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri said in an interview with Reuters. “I hope the process will take not more than one week.”

Before the initial signs this week that some troops were withdrawing, Indonesia had as many as 25,000 soldiers and police officers in East Timor. Western diplomats predict only a cadre of commanders will be left in October or November when the Indonesian parliament meets to endorse or reject results of the Aug. 30 election.

Many leaders of the ruling Golkar party are unhappy with President B.J. Habibie’s offer in January to let the East Timorese decide between autonomy within Indonesia or independence, but most have said they would honor the voters’ wishes.

The dispatch of 4,500 Australian troops to East Timor will in effect strip this country of its front-line defenses at home. But the Australian government sees stability in Indonesia as key to stability in the region--and fears that continued bloodshed in East Timor could spread over the Indonesian archipelago and threaten its own security.

Australia has joined peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Rwanda and other countries, but never before has it led such a force or been involved in one so close to home.

Although an anti-independence militia commander, Filomeno Kornai, told reporters in West Timor that his forces would “eat the hearts of those that come to East Timor,” Western diplomats are hopeful that the Indonesian military, which backs the militias, will honor its pledge to support INTERFET’s mission.

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Times staff writers Sonni Efron in Jakarta, Indonesia, Paul Richter in Washington and Maggie Farley at the United Nations contributed to this report.