"Australian military plans to be in East Timor for 6 months
CANBERRA (AP): Australia may keep soldiers in East Timor for another six months on a peacekeeping mission to curb unrest that has left 27 people dead, the Australian military chief said Wednesday.
Australia committed 2,000 military personnel to East Timor, including 1,300 front-line troops, after Dili asked for help from Canberra as well as Malaysia, Portugal and New Zealand to quell the violence.
The unrest in East Timor began after a rebellion by dismissed soldiers last week. The recent bloodshed has raised concerns that East Timor is plunging into a civil war, seven years after its traumatic break from Indonesia's rule.
Chief of the Defense Force Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston told a Senate committee hearing Wednesday he was planning to keep soldiers in East Timor for six months in "worst-case circumstances."
"We plan for six months, but it is up to government to determine how long we go for," Houston told the committee.Houston said he hoped to scale down Australia's troop presence as conditions stabilize in East Timor.
What began in recent months as a schism within the armed forces spilled over in the past week to the general population, which is divided on geographical lines of east and west, or those perceived to have been pro-Indonesian against those who wantedindependence.
Houston described some of the chaos as organized, but not from outside the country. He declined to speculate on who was organizing the gangs and why.
"I think there are some gangs out there and I think those gangs are being organized," Houston said. "And I think there's also criminals who are exploiting the circumstances to pursue petty crime." "
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