| Subject: Holbrooke
UN should not bolster West Timor camps
Holbrooke UN should not bolster West Timor camps By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke called on the U.N. refugee agency on Monday to concentrate on getting East Timor refugees out of camps in West Timor rather than caring for them in captivity. ``Money spent in those camps by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would be better spent resettling those people in East Timor or, if, they are legitimately unwilling to go home, to encourage Indonesia to resettle them,'' he told the Security Council. At issue is tens of thousands of East Timorese, many of them forced across the Indonesian border into West Timor by armed gangs in September. The gunmen, or militia, aided by the Indonesian army, went on a killing, looting and burning spree after East Timorese voted for independence from Jakarta in a U.N.-organised August 30 ballot. Holbrooke, who urged ``everyone involved in the situation to work hard to get those camps opened,'' is one of the few ambassadors to raise the controversy at the United Nations in New York. Key council members and senior U.N. officials appear to have left political negotiations on the camps to UNHCR and the Australian-led troops restoring order in East Timor. Holbrooke, who recently returned from a trip to Indonesia and East Timor, also told the Council more had to be done to counteract the misinformation that pro-Jakarta militia were spreading around the camps in West Timor. ``Over 100,000 East Timorese are still in those camps being fed misinformation and inaccurate stories by the militia and therefore are afraid to return,'' he said. Holbrooke said some messages from Bishop Carlos Belo, the East Timorese Nobel prize winner, and East Timor independence leader Xanana Gusmao had reached the camps in West Timor. But he said in general there was a ``massive public relations failure in West Timor'' and ``no effective effort to counter the propaganda that is being spread.'' He was speaking during a Security Council debate on preventing armed conflicts and said the U.N. effort in East Timor would be ruined if refugees remained in West Timor. The United Nations is administering the former Portuguese colony during a transition period to independence. Indonesia invaded the territory in 1975 but has now relinquished it. ``We can talk generalities as long as we want but here is a specific example of where the United Nations is performing magnificently in East Timor,'' Holbrooke said, ``But I regret to say has not yet done what it needs to do in West Timor.'' ``Those people should not remain in other camps. Otherwise all the good words in this session will be meaningless in an area of the world where the United Nations has undertaken massive responsibilities,'' Holbrooke added. President Bill Clinton imposed an arms embargo on Indonesia in September, a move diplomats say helped to persuade Jakarta to allow foreign troops into East Timor. Washington appears now to have linked the restoration of military ties with Indonesia to the fate of the refugees. The Indonesian army's fleet of transport aircraft, which it relies on to move troops around the archipelago, could be impaired for lack of spare parts if the embargo is not lifted. In Geneva, UNHCR on Monday said the flow of refugees slowed despite an agreement last week to speed repatriation. The accord was signed made by Indonesia's army and the Australian-led troops in the territory. UNHCR said 107,700 people had returned so far since a repatriation programme began on October 8. That was less than half of the estimated 250,000 refugees who had fled violence in East Timor after the August 30 vote. In the August ballot, some 80 percent of 450,000 voters among the territory's 800,000 people supported independence. Back to November Menu Note: For those who would like to fax "the powers that be" - CallCenter V3.5.8, is a Native 32-bit Voice Telephony software application integrated with fax and data communications... and it's free of charge! Download from http://www.v3inc.com/ |