U.S. to Boost Its Forces Near E. Timor

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said Wednesday that the United States was increasing its commitment to the international peacekeeping force in East Timor and warned Indonesia to control its military activities in the territory.

Cohen, on a three-hour stopover here en route to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, said the helicopter carrier Belleau Wood would be dispatched to the area today after its crew completed loading in Okinawa. The CH-53 Sea Stallions on board will be used to ferry equipment for the Australian-led force.

The deployment will increase the number of U.S. personnel participating in noncombat roles in Operation Stabilize to 450 from the current 275. Only nine of the 275 are on the ground in East Timor, providing support in logistics, communications and intelligence. The others are working out of Darwin, the forward staging area for the operation.

The U.N.-sanctioned force is expected to grow to 7,500 men and women, representing about 20 nations, within a month.

Cohen told reporters here that Indonesia faces political isolation and economic consequences if it fails to control its armed forces and military-backed militias in both East and West Timor. Soldiers and militiamen teamed up to kill, loot and burn after East Timor voted Aug. 30 to seek independence from Indonesia, which invaded it in 1975 and annexed it as a province the following year.

“The people of East Timor,” Cohen said, “have voted for independence, and they [the Indonesian government] have an obligation to control the military, to make sure the military does not support the militias who have been engaged in marauding activities and vicious assaults upon unarmed civilians.”

Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official on Cohen’s plane as saying that between 2,000 and 4,000 militiamen were massing on the West Timorese side of the border for possible attacks on the peacekeeping force in East Timor.

“We’re aware of the reports, and we continue to monitor the border situation carefully,” Brig. Mark Evans, the commander of Australian land forces in Operation Stabilize, said in an interview this week.

Australia already has elite special forces teams operating covertly in the border area.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations in New York, Indonesia made a significant concession, agreeing to let the U.N.’s refugee agency determine how many of the 220,000 displaced East Timorese in camps in West Timor want to return home.

The same militias that terrorized East Timor are running the camps in West Timor, and there have been numerous reports of pro-independence refugees being taken forcefully from the camps and killed. Although the camps have been off limits to foreigners, the International Committee of the Red Cross will now be allowed access, Indonesian diplomats in New York said.

Also in New York, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright accepted a challenge from Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Abdullah Alatas to send a senior official to investigate the situation at West Timor’s refugee camps.

A senior State Department official said the U.S. representative--probably an assistant secretary of State--is likely to leave “in a matter of days.”

Alatas was responding to Albright’s assessment that conditions in the camps are “terribly troubling . . . appalling.” Albright based her conclusion on a report from Julia Taft, assistant secretary of State for refugees, who spent six days in Indonesia earlier this month.

Alatas told Albright that he had checked with the Indonesian authorities and was assured that “the situation is under control,” the State Department official, who attended their meeting, told reporters.

The official said Albright repeated Taft’s report that anti-independence militias, in clear collusion with the Indonesian military, are terrorizing the camps.

At that point, the official said, Alatas challenged Albright to send another top official to look at the situation on the ground, and Albright immediately agreed.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in New York contributed to this report.