Some of the 100, 000 refugees in West Timor feel terrorised by the presence of the militias.
After three United Nations workers were killed in West Timor in September, some donors threatened to hold back assistance.
In exchange, Indonesia repeated its pledges to reform its economy and to get tough with the militia groups operating in West Timor.
About one-third of the population fled across the border to West Timor, then as now part of Indonesia proper, to escape the devastation.
Though some of the militia leaders are still at large in West Timor, where some 80, 000 refugees remain in camps, they have not managed serious disruption.
But reliable eyewitnesses speak of Indonesians loading up bodies into trucks and taking them to West Timor, and of corpses that have washed up on East Timor's shores.
Interfet is also only now beginning to get an idea of what might be transpiring in Oecussi, the East Timor enclave of some 91, 000 people which is actually within West Timor.
In a flying visit on September 18th, the American defence secretary, William Cohen, warned him that Indonesia faced isolation if it did not act fast to disarm the militias in West Timor, where three United Nations workers were killed on September 6th.
The United States has said that a restoration of its previous relations with Indonesia depends both on the armed forces cutting their links with the militias and on an improvement in West Timor, where more than 200, 000 East Timorese are thought to have been moved.
The Indonesian parliament agreed unanimously to let the province of East Timor become independent, as thousands of refugees from the west of the island made their way back home.
For example, we were in a supporting role when West African ECOWAS forces intervened recently in Liberia and when Australian forces did their peace operations in East Timor.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Transforming the United States Global Defense Post
应用推荐