East Timor calls for return of UN peacekeepers

FT
By Shawn Donnan in Jakarta and Mark Turner at the United Nations
Published: June 13 2006 18:05 Last updated: June 13 2006 18:05

East Timor has requested that United Nations peacekeepers replace an Australian-led force sent to the country following the worst wave of violence since Indonesia’s withdrawal seven years ago.
The requests for a major boost to the UN’s presence in the country were presented to the Security Council in New York on Tuesday. The UN ran East Timor from 1999 to 2002.

In a letter to Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, released on Tuesday, East Timor’s president, Xanana Gusmao, Mari Alkatiri, prime minister, and the head of parliament call for an 870-member UN police force “to maintain law and order” in the country.

In a speech read to the Security Council on his behalf, Jose Ramos-Horta, East Timor’s foreign and defence minister, also calls for a UN peacekeeping force to replace the current Australian-led force, calling such a move “essential” to “reduce political and diplomatic tensions.”

He said the force should “comprise a greater number of countries” such as Fiji, Singapore, and Thailand. The call comes despite Canberra’s leadership role in responding to the crisis last month by quickly deploying more than 1,300 troops.

Mr Ramos-Horta, who could not deliver the speech in person because of unrest at home, said East Timor still needed to do more work to determine what sort of UN mission it wanted and planned to have “detailed discussions” with the UN in the weeks to come.

But he said his country was seeking “UN organised, administered and conducted presidential and parliamentary elections” next year and UN civilian advisers to be “embedded in government administration”.

He also indicated the UN should prepare for a lengthy stay, saying “the time frame has to be long enough to enable our state institutions to move beyond the fragile state, consistent with being an infant state.”

Robert Hill, the Australian ambassador, said “a new Security Council-mandated mission should be established under Chapter 7”, and said there was a case for appointing a “foreign national as police chief.”

Ian Martin, the UN envoy, warned that “as long as groups which have access to arms remain disaffected, the security situation cannot be said to have been resolved...There remains the potential for violent clashes”.