Government Aiding Refugees, U.N. Says

Indonesia has started taking measures to improve security in West Timor province’s squalid refugee camps and appears willing to discuss ways to clear them out entirely, senior U.N. and East Timorese officials said.

Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, who has bitterly criticized Indonesia’s response to the refugee situation in the past, said his recent visit to Indonesia convinced him that the government wants to help resolve the plight of tens of thousands of refugees who fled East Timor in 1999 after pro-Indonesia militias went on a rampage in the territory to protest a U.N.-organized referendum that backed independence.