•  Anti-Australian protests hit major cities
•  IMF suspends talks on economic program
•  Indonesia's future collapses into Timor ruins
•  A general squeeze and Habibie succumbs
•  US priority is to maintain good ties
•  Habibie feels the heat
•  Timor crisis drags down Rupiah, stocks

•  Military exercises called off

•  Thousands take to the streets over Timor
•  The tide of protest swells

Militia, troops attack Timor refugees: UN

Darwin -- Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militiamen were Sunday attacking thousands of refugees massed in the East Timorese town of Dare, a spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) said here.

"This is once again a major crime against the East Timorese people," spokesman David Wimhurst told a press conference, appealing for international action to halt the violence. "There is an urgent need for armed intervention to prevent these attacks continuing.

"The international community have to decide what they will do to prevent these ongoing killings. Action is needed urgently," added Wimhurst, saying he had spoken directly to two people in Dare, nine kilometres (six miles) south of the East Timor capital of Dili, and received other accounts via relatives of witnesses in Australia. "They are still slaughtering people in East Timor and the international community has not acted."

One man had called his niece in Sydney to tell her of the Dare attack, he said. "Right now, he is on top of the mountain over Dare," Wimhurst added. "What he said is he could hear shots being fired below him.

"He said there are thousands of refugees down there. He can hear the people screaming in fear. "And he said the TNI [Indonesian armed forces] are advancing up the mountain killing everybody."

Wimhurst said there were "thousands" of refugees in the town where church workers have been aiding refugees. UNAMET last week estimated at least 30,000 people had massed in Dare amid escalating violence by pro-Jakarta militias.

He added UNAMET was also concerned the refugees in Dare were running short of food, quoting Sister Anne Forbes of the Sisters of Mercy, as telling him the little food left was being given only to women and children. "There is an urgent need to get food in there by the most speedy means possible," the spokesman said.

Will we let them fall before our eyes?

John Pilger -- It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass.

Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of petrified trees which appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.

They were almost everywhere; great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road, overlooking white slabs.

I carried hand-drawn maps of other, unmarked graves where some of those murdered by Indonesian troops at the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre had been buried; I had no idea that so much of the country was a vast grave, marked by paths that ended abruptly, and fields inexplicably bulldozed, and earth inexplicably covered with tarmac, and villages, which are not so much human entities as memorials.

Kraras is one of them. It is known as the "village of the widows", because 287 people were slaughtered by the Indonesians.

In a meticulous hand that carried on from a faded typewriter ribbon, a priest recorded the name, age, cause of death and date and place of the killing of every victim.

In the last column, he identified the Indonesian battalion responsible for each murder. I have the document. Like the ubiquitous crosses, it records the Calvary of 40 families, among them, the dos Anjos family.

In 1987, I interviewed Arthur ("Steve") Stevenson, a former Australian commando who had fought the Japanese in Timor. He told me the story of Celistino dos Anjos, whose ingenuity and couraged had saved his life behind Japanese lines, the kind of man who fought like a lion to prevent the Japanese building airstrips from which they planned to attack Australia -- the kind of man to whom leaflets dropped by the Royal Australian Air Force were addressed, as the Australians retreated. "We shall never forget you," the leaflets said.

In 1986, Steve Stevenson received a letter from Celestino's son, Virgilio, who was the same age as his own son. He wrote that his father had survived the Indonesian invasion in 1975, but he went on: "In August 1983, Indonesian forces entered our village, Kraras.

They looted, burned and massacred, with fighter aircraft overhead. On 27/9/83 they made my father and my wife dig their own graves, and they machine gunned them. My wife was pregnant."

The Kraras list is among my most valued possessions. Not only is it evidence of genocide, it is an extraordinary political document that shames Indonesia's Faustian partners in the western democracies, especially Australia.

In my experience, East Timor is the greatest, most enduring crime of the late 20th century. Not only do the horrors committed by the Suharto dynasty lay claim to this distinction -- proportionally, not even Pol Pot put to death as many people -- but no other recent crime against humanity, from the American devastation of Indochina to Rwanda, offers such a comprehensive charge sheet.

"Descent into violence" has become the most worked media cliche of the past few weeks, as if a collective, almost wilful amnesia prevents us remembering when the descent really began, and who were Indonesia's partners in its crime. On 7 December, 1975, when Air Force One, carrying President Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had climbed out of Indonesian airspace, Indonesian paratroopers dropped on Dili, East Timor's capital, and the bloodbath began.

"[Ford and Kissinger] came and gave Suharto the green light," Phillip Liechty, the CIA desk officer in Jakarta at the time told me. "The invasion was delayed two days so they could get the hell out. We were ordered to give the Indonesians everything they wanted, and US arms were shipped straight to East Timor without Congress knowing. I saw all the hard intelligence; the place was a free fire zone ... and all because we didn't want some little country being neutral or leftist at the UN."

There were other, more pressing reasons. "With the region's richest board of natural resources," wrote Richard Nixon in 1967, "Indonesia is the greatest prize in South-East Asia."

Indonesia is where the British empire rose again. Britain is Indonesia's largest investor in chemicals, paper, electricity and weapons.

Name a major British multinational and you can bet it is "investing" in Indonesia. The list ranges from Shell and BP, to the BOC Group and Marks and Spencer to Unilever and Glaxo Wellcome, to the rapacious Rio Tinto, which has a huge holding in the three-billion-dollar Freeport copper-and-gold mining operation in West Papua.

However, it is the British war industry that has provided the Jakarta gang with its most vital prop since 1978 when Labour's Foreign Secretary David Owen dismissed estimates of East Timorese dead as "exaggerated" and approved the sale of the first Hawk fighter-bombers to Indonesia.

The Blair Government is Jakarta's biggest arms supplier. While the Indonesian death squads, "cleanse" Dili, Mr Blair has pointedly refused to use Britain's considerable economic and military clout.

In 1994, Labour's spokesman on foreign affairs, Robin Cook, told Parliament that Hawk aircraft had been "observed on bombing runs in East Timor in most years since 1984". He then denied his own words and, once in Government, allowed his underlings at the Foreign Office to lie that no Hawks were operational in East Timor.

The point is that, between them, Britain and the United States could stop the Indonesians in their tracks if they wanted to. (Australia has dissipated any influence it might have had after years of obsequious dealings with Jakarta.)

Without pressure from their godfathers in Washington and London, the Indonesians are telling the United Nations and the world to go to hell; and the UN is scuttling.

Who can the people of East Timor look to? Public opinion in western countries is a greater phenomenon for change than many realise. Are we going to let the East Timorese people, bravest of the brave, who defied the genocidists and came out to vote for democracy and freedom, fall before our eyes? Are we going to allow those with the power to act, do nothing, and in our name?

An audience with Jakarta's Dr Strangelove

Richard Lloyd Parry -- It is a very long drive up the palm- lined, four-lane avenue to the monolithic headquarters of the Indonesia military just outside Jakarta, and the tension in our car is rising. It is 9.30 in the morning and the five ambassadors from New York are finally to meet face to face the man who wields the real power in this country -- and the power to stop the desperate suffering in East Timor. He is Chief General Wiranto.

Except that the meeting is not to be with the general alone. The United Nations delegation -- and this lone reporter, nervously tagging along incognito -- finds itself ushered into a third-floor conference room. General Wiranto has brought out all of his brass -- 20 generals ranged around him. The intent to intimidate is obvious. We are severely outnumbered, our nametags are egregiously misspelt. Never mind the cups of cold, sweet tea and pastries.

The ensuing two hours turn almost comical -- a script, perhaps, from a Sixties war comedy, with Mel Brooks as General Wiranto. But there is nothing funny here this week. The chance was given to the people of East Timor to find freedom, after 24 years of brutal oppression, with the self-determination referendum, organised by the UN, of 30 August. They voted overwhelmingly for independence.

And now that chance is being sabotaged -- sabotaged, most say, by this man's army. General Wiranto, an imposing man with an unsettling ability to conceal all feelings, takes instant charge of the proceedings. His opening remarks are peppered with bland reassurances: the TNI, the Indonesia army, is committed to respecting the results of the ballot.

With martial law now imposed, it is well on the way to restoring order in East Timor. The TNI does not need the help of outside peace-keeping forces. "Our commitment to handling the problem should not be doubted," he says.

Then comes a presentation by his "General for Information", complete with graphs. Do they think the UN Security Council ambassadors are stupid or blind? Some of the graphs are surreal in their dishonesty. One depicts the numbers of "attacks, burnings and destructions" in East Timor over 10 days since 30 August. The worst, allegedly, was on 2 September. On that day, the graph tells us, there were five attacks. And the number of burnings on 8 September? Just two.

The leader of the UN group is Martin Andjaba, a former Swapo freedom fighter from Namibia and now Namibia's UN ambassador. Finally, he takes the floor. He forsakes diplomacy. The Indonesian government and military, he begins, have stated repeatedly that they are doing enough now to protect the East Timorese. "We do not believe them. The violence has continued, the oppression, the destruction of property has continued unabated. The killing continues even as we sit here. In fact, the situation has worsened."

Mr Andjaba does not call Chief General Wiranto a liar, or not quite. But he does call him a failure -- in front of his generals. "You are failing the international community, you are failing the the people of East Timor and you are failing Indonesia," he continues. "Perhaps it is a question of lack of political will on your side."

Therein resides the key question this week: why has the TNI allowed the carnage to happen, even abetted it? Does it intend to reduce East Timor to rubble before handing it over to the UN -- as it is supposed to in November -- as a warning to other areas of the country? Or does the TNI mean simply to dishonour the UN agreements and to keep hold of the province for ever?

General Wiranto is not going to answer that in this room. Instead, he launches into a second monologue. All will be well. Only the TNI understands the people of East Timor. Only the TNI can succeed in achieving reconciliation in the divided province. The TNI, what is more, will repair the physical damage so that it can "hand over East Timor in good condition". And how long will that take, you might wonder? Months? Or years?

He will allow foreign humanitarian workers into East Timor again, but the introduction of foreign peace-keepers is another issue, "because it is relevant to the dignity of the TNI". And he tries this: if a foreign force is brought in, bloodshed will follow because, he argues, it will encourage the pro-independence majority to begin attacking those opposed to independence.

At about this time General Wiranto's control of the meeting is punctured by the trill of a mobile phone on our side of the room. It is from the UN compound in Dili, the capital of East Timor. Efforts to evacuate non-essential UN staff to Darwin in Australia have been halted because the compound is under siege again by militia wielding guns and grenades and trying to force their way in. The general is challenged by Mr Andjaba. What is going on? Did you not promise to arrest, even shoot, those carrying arms under martial law?

General Wiranto, however, has his own phone and says he will get the "real information" from his "insubordinate commander" in East Timor. (I imagine I have misheard him, but he repeats "insubordinate" over and again.) "Such kinds of news and rumours have been heard by me many times," he insists, "but when I check the news I find that it is contrary to the facts." Sure enough, the "insubordinate" is confident. General Wiranto reports: "There is no trouble, the situation is peaceful."

Then our phone rings again -- more news of trouble in Dili and the general, beginning to sound impatient, promises to check a second time. Oh, so there may be some trouble, yes. But it is only some veterans protesting, because of the proposed evacuation of locally hired UN staff. It is nothing serious. "You must believe me," he tells his guests.

So this is how it is. The UN might not be perfect. But this cameo of the absurd, with two telephones in a single room telling two different stories, captures exactly what the UN is up against. These events are happening now, and still General Wiranto denies that they are happening.

It is in the midst of this exchange that the general surpasses all with an invitation. Recently, he has supervised the laying out of a golf course on ground here that was to have accommodated a new police headquarters. Would the ambassadors come and play a round with him some time? And by the way, it is called the Cobra Course, because of all the snakes found on it. "Cobras," a UN delegate whispers in my ear. "How appropriate."

Death invades a church

Kupang, West Timor -- The Reverend Dewanto was the first to die, said Sister Mary Barudero. The militiamen had lined up outside the old wooden church filled with refugees in the East Timorese town of Suai on Monday afternoon, and the young Indonesian priest stepped out dressed in his clerical robes to meet the trouble.

A burst of gunfire cut him down. The Reverend Francisco followed. The blood soaked his white robes. The militiamen waited for the senior parish priest, the Reverend Hilario. When he did not emerge, they kicked down the door to his study and sprayed him with automatic fire.

One of the nuns watched from the window of her nearby house at the massacre that followed, said Sister Barudero. The militiamen entered the church filled with refugees, and began firing long bursts from their weapons. Then they threw hand grenades into the huddled victims. One, two, three grenades. As they left, blood flowed down the doorstep.

Inside, there had been only young children and women, babies at their mothers' breasts, and pregnant women, she said. The men had fled days earlier.

"They went to the church because that's where they felt safe," said the nun, 64, vainly fighting her tears. "They felt being near the priests was protection."

Her account of the massacre, which was confirmed Thursday by the Vatican, is one of the first graphic descriptions of the violence that has wracked East Timor at the hands of Indonesian military-backed militiamen who oppose independence for the province.

Among the first victims have been the Roman Catholic clergy, seen by the militia as having supported independence for East Timor. The nun, a nurse, agreed to talk because, she said, "I have lived my life. I am not afraid to die."

Other refugees still feel the militia's reach in the supposed safety of West Timor, and have been warned not to talk to reporters. Sister Barudero's colleague, who watched the massacre, has fled to Australia but still is afraid to be identified, she said.

The fears of those in West Timor are not exaggerated. The militiamen who have brought destruction to East Timor have taken up control of the 84,000 refugees now in camps in West Timor, and move around freely in the West Timor capital of Kupang. Some are armed; some seem intent on intimidating foreigners and refugees. Foreigners have not been allowed in the camps.

At a West Timor refugee camp in Atambua, on the border with East Timor, a man identified as a supporter of independence was killed Wednesday, apparently by militiamen.

An official of the Catholic Relief Services, who just returned from Atambua, provided some confirmation of reports that pro- Independence refugees had been forcibly removed from East Timor.

"If you ask the refugees once, they say they left because it was unsafe, and they had to leave their houses," said William Openg, an Indonesian relief worker for the Catholic services. "But if you ask again, they will tell you that the soldiers terrorized them and made them come."

Although many in the refugee camps are said to be opponents of independence, those who support the outcome of the ballot may not acknowledge it.

"They are afraid to show their face," said Agapitus Prasetya, a Unicef worker who has been in the refugee camps. "It could cost them their lives. The militias are everywhere."

Anti-foreigner passions have been whipped up by the militias, and even Indonesian staff members distributing food to the refugees strip the Unicef signs off their cars, he said.

"The militias are killing people, and the people are threatened here in West Timor," said a Catholic clergyman who fled from Dili only to find militiamen in control of refugee camps in West Timor. "Where is the law and order in Indonesia? The militias, the military and the police are above the law."

He and several other clergy members described their flight from East Timor on the condition that their names not be used. They said they feared consequences from the Indonesian military and Timorese militias. One sister who lived in Dili said the gunfire began about three hours after the ballot result approving independence was announced last Saturday.

"It was really frightening. We couldn't go out of the house," she said. "We could see a lot of fires. It looked like they would use diesel gas, because the fires would be big black balls, and then you could see white smoke from houses. That was everywhere."

On Monday, she and other nuns decided it was too dangerous, and left in an old truck in a convoy escorted by police. As they passed through Dili, she saw a scene of fires and lawlessness, she said.

"It was remarkable," she said. "There was shooting going on, and people were running for their lives. But others were looting the stores, very calmly, as though they were so relaxed." She said she saw some looters loading goods into military trucks.

In one section, "all the stores were razed," she said. "I saw a lot of military, and of course, the militias. Some people were ransacking, and some people were looting. The whole place was in ruins, except for the government buildings. And there were a lot of people moving out, because their houses were burning."

Another member of the clergy said that the gunfire intensified in the days and nights after the referendum results. "God, it was frightening," he said. "There were motorcycles running all over, bringing military and militias. You could hear the big guns of the military going on."

On Tuesday, the water, electricity and telephone lines were cut in his section of Dili, and he decided to leave, said the clergyman. He passed many burned houses, he said. "It seemed the pro-independence houses were targeted. But the referendum was approved four-to-one, so they didn't have to go very far."

"I never saw any instance of refugees being forced by gunpoint," said a priest. "Our people did not want to leave. But they were told if they stayed, the houses would be burned and they might be killed. They were forced out by fear."

The militias were particularly strong in the western areas of East Timor, where Sister Barudero and four other nuns ran a hospital in Suai, and where Roman Catholic priests ran the church where the massacre occurred. Sister Barudero said she had not intended to leave, even after the men fled, even after more victims of the rising violence came to the hospital, even after she and her nuns had to dig a grave for a victim on the grounds of the hospital. The victim's family was too afraid to claim him, she said. But after the massacre, "There was no one left to help. They had all left or been killed.

"And I knew, if we stayed, we could be killed," she said. "I am old. I'm ready to die. But the young sisters would not go unless I went. They have many years left to help people. Finally, I said, pack what you can. We will leave."

Forced to turn a blind eye to a massacre

A. Lin Neumann, Bangkok -- When machete-wielding thugs set upon journalists in East Timor after the territory's August 30 vote for independence, it looked like another gruesome case of the press caught between warring sides. Deplorable, yes, but it comes with the territory if you choose to cover the front lines in conflict zones.

Look again. Something far more cynical is at work this time. The Indonesian government -- or at some command level, the military - has used armed gangs to rid East Timor of witnesses to the terror to come.

With few exceptions, the press corps covering East Timor has now been evacuated. And when you remove the press from a story, you remove the world's eyes. As atrocities continue, we are prevented from seeing, learning and judging the scope of the tragedy.

The damage to Indonesia's credibility and its fragile democracy is incalculable. Since former President Suharto stepped aside last year, Asians and many others have watched in amazement as the Indonesian media blossomed with a vibrancy that seemed to dissipate the dark shadows of Mr. Suharto's New Order regime.

East Timor demonstrates that the shadows remain. If armed gangs can hound out the international press in a small, disputed territory, how might such forces behave in a larger crisis, such as the one now building over the National Parliament's selection of a president in November?

There were no casualties among the correspondents covering East Timor. While that is a relief, it also looks like part of the larger plan. It is evident enough that those supporting the gangs concluded that a correspondent's death would create too big a problem.

Dozens of journalists have testified that the military and police not only watched gun-toting terrorists pummel correspondents and invade hotels; they also intervened to see that the beatings stopped short of lethal force. This indicates a high degree of control over supposedly uncontrollable thugs.

When the BBC's Jonathan Head suffered a broken arm the day after the vote, other reporters at the scene saw a man quietly step into the fray with the words, "That's enough."

James Hutchison, a Reuters Television correspondent, watched about 400 soldiers and police officers do nothing when a militia member opened fire on the last functioning hotel in East Timor, the Mahkota. The terrorist aimed at satellite dishes and microwave uplink facilities on the hotel's roof. "It would seem it was pure intimidation to get us out of East Timor," Mr. Hutchison said afterward. "And it worked."

Jakarta's calculation that the press can be harassed out of the picture speaks volumes about its lack of commitment to democratic institutions and the democratic process. This underscores the international community's responsibilities, since the UN sponsored the East Timor referendum.

Any peacekeepers sent to the territory now must include media protection among their duties. President B.J. Habibie must be called to task for attempting to blind the world.

UN team visits Timor as Jakarta feels heat

Vorasit Satienlerk, Dili -- A UN Security Council team toured the ruined capital of East Timor on Saturday as the world community drew up plans for a security force to restore peace to the bloodied territory.

The UN Security Council was due to open debate on East Timor on Saturday after Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Indonesia it could face responsibility for crimes against humanity there unless it allowed peacekeepers in.

Jakarta is under huge pressure to halt the massacres, carried out by anti-independence militia angered by the territory's recent, overwhelming vote in favour of ending Indonesian rule.

The UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) on Saturday reported a lull in violence around its compound in the capital, Dili.

The five-member Security Council team, in Dili on an inspection mission, travelled with armed forces chief General Wiranto amid heavy security.

A UNAMET spokesman said the night had been quiet with only sporadic shooting around the compound in Dili, scarred by days of murder, burning and looting. Thousands have been killed and the United Nations has voiced concerns about serious food shortages.

US President Bill Clinton blamed the Indonesian military for backing the killings by pro-Jakarta militiamen and also urged Indonesia to accept foreign peacekeepers. Jakarta said on Saturday an international peacekeeping force was an option. But it has yet to give any go-ahead.

Dili's houses have been torched and residents are either dead or have fled. UNAMET now offers symbolic protection to a dwindling group of pro-independence refugees, many of whom have fled for the hills behind the UN compound.

Mission official Pat O'Sullivan said there were about 1,000 refugees still in the compound and there was enough food.

"There are a lot of children running about which makes it difficult to make an exact count. Their mood is good, under the circumstances," he said. A member of the Security Council mission, British delegate Jeremy Greenstock, said before leaving for East Timor: "We are not going to go to war with Indonesia on this."

"It needs to be with the cooperation of Indonesia. I think Indonesia now realises that the burden of security has to be shared."

Security Council president Peter van Walsum said the council would await the return of the team to New York before adopting any resolution or issuing a formal statement.

The mission has been trying to persuade Indonesia to allow an international force to go to East Timor to quell the violence in the former Portuguese colony that Indonesia annexed in 1976. But Indonesia has insisted it can handle the situation alone.

Clinton, in New Zealand for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders, said Indonesia must request a UN peacekeeping force. Asked when this might happen, he said: "I think you'll see a development in the next couple of days."

"Today we suspended all military sales and we continue to work to persuade the Indonesians to support a United Nations operation to go in and secure the safety of the people there and that's what we have to continue to do," Clinton said.

The United States and other nations are unwilling to send in peacekeepers without an invitation from Indonesia, the world's largest Moslem nation.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Britain, Canada, the Philippines and Portugal had given firm commitments to participate in a UN-mandated peacekeeping force if Indonesia consented.

Howard, also at the New Zealand summit, said the United States, Sweden, Thailand and France had agreed in principle to support such a force in a way that had yet to be defined.

He had said previously that up to 8,000 peacekeepers would be needed for such a force, which Australia would lead. Dramatic television footage brought in to Darwin showed the storming this week of a Red Cross compound in Dili.

Refugees cowered under fire from pro-Jakarta militia wearing red and white bandanas -- Indonesia's national colours. Women and children were herded from the building as Indonesian police, some drunk and asking the cameraman for beer, sat and watched. A spokeswoman for East Timor resistance leader Jose Ramos-Horta said Clinton had agreed to meet him on Monday.

US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on Friday the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should make any lending to Indonesia contingent on how it handles East Timor.

Civilians 'being attacked in the hills'

Barry Porter, Auckland -- Resistance leader and Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos Horta said yesterday he had received reports that pro-Jakarta forces had begun attacking East Timor hillsides where unarmed civilians had taken refuge.

He warned that tens of thousands of women, children and the elderly would die over the next few days. "If they do not die of slaughter, they will die of starvation," said Mr Ramos Horta, claiming the hills could not cope with such an influx.

He said he had received witness accounts of four truckloads of civilians being blown up on the outskirts of Dili. Bodies were being dumped into the sea and there had been "thousands" of deaths in the Dili area alone over the past few days, he claimed. "Hundreds of others are being killed elsewhere," he said.

Mr Ramos Horta described it as a "preordained, predetermined" campaign of violence by Indonesian military factions opposed to the East Timorese people's recent overwhelming vote for independence.

Given that countries such as the United States, Australia, Britain and Canada had sold the Indonesians weapons and provided military training, Mr Ramos Horta said they could shoulder some of the blame.

He also said that if the UN Security Council, New Zealand, Australia and other countries insisted an invitation had to come from Jakarta before intervention, "they will be accomplices in this genocide".

Mr Ramos Horta said he did not understand why world leaders could intervene to halt mass deportation and killings in Kosovo without seeking Serbia's consent but needed an invitation from Jakarta when no UN members other than Australia officially recognised Indonesia's sovereignty over East Timor.

In particular, Mr Ramos Horta called on China to fulfil its UN Security Council obligations -- "if not for the East Timorese, for their own people", he said, referring to the killing and rape of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia last year.

Victims 'left to die' on streets where they fell

Most of the East Timorese killed in the violence that has swept the capital, Dili, were left to die where they fell on the street, a French doctor who treated hundreds of wounded in a city clinic said yesterday.

The Medecins du Monde doctor, who fled the territory on Wednesday, said he had treated 200 wounded, including 30 children, in the past five weeks.

"It was mainly gunshot wounds, both homemade guns and automatic weapons. We also had a lot of machete wounds and stabbings," he said in Darwin.

"I only saw a small amount of the total number of wounded. It was so dangerous to come to the clinic that people often didn't even try. "The bodies were left where they were."

The doctor asked not to be named as he hoped to return to East Timor. "Part of the team is trying to get back to East Timor. We want to be back in position soon. But I can't get through to the clinic, nor to the [Carmelite] sisters there. Maybe the clinic burned down."

Allegations of widespread killing in East Timor's turmoil are sweeping fast-growing border refugee camps, where an estimated 50,000 people shelter under the gaze of militiamen accused of creating the mayhem.

The UN said yesterday it was investigating reports of executions of East Timorese independence supporters in Indonesian West Timor.

Commenting on unconfirmed reports of massacres in the Indonesian territory, UN mission spokesman David Wimhurst cited sources which claimed to have eyewitness accounts that independence activists had been summarily executed in front of witnesses in West Timor. "I don't have any idea of the numbers," he said.

Many frightened refugees said they were forcibly sent across the border to camps controlled by the same army and militias spreading terror at home.

An Australian human rights group yesterday accused Indonesian soldiers of posing as United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (Unamet) staff to encourage East Timorese to leave the territory.

"The military, posing as Unamet, is telling East Timorese that Unamet is encouraging them to leave East Timor," the Melbourne- based East Timor Human Rights Centre said.

It quoted witnesses as saying some Indonesian soldiers in East Timor were wearing Unamet uniforms, including the mission's blue berets.

The tens of thousands who huddled under blue and orange plastic tarpaulins in one camp near Atambua, 20km west of the border, swapped horror stories, but reports of large-scale killings were impossible to confirm.

"I saw some dead. But I don't know how many or who killed them. I just tried to get out quickly," said Jesus da Costa, a taxi driver who fled Dili on Tuesday at the height of the violence.

The mass military evacuation of East Timorese to West Timor continued yesterday as the Indonesian Government announced 21 billion rupiah and 1,500 tonnes of rice had been earmarked for the refugees in West Timor. But the state Antara news agency said there was nothing on offer for those left behind.

News vacuum as reporters go missing

Vaudine England, Jakarta -- Indonesia's Alliance of Independent Journalists has issued an "urgent action" statement listing several Indonesian journalists missing in East Timor, as concerns grow about the difficulty of finding out what is happening in the territory.

Peter Rohe, a journalist with the Jakarta-based Suara Bangsa daily, last made contact with his editor on Tuesday morning. Two freelance reporters are also missing in the territory: Joaquim Rohi and Mindho Rajagoekgoek, who reports for Radio Netherlands.

Tri Agus Siswowohardjo, a journalist, former political prisoner and member of the local ballot monitoring group, Kiper, is in hiding somewhere in East Timor.

Reports filtering through from the handful of foreign journalists left in the besieged United Nations compound in Dili, and statements from church groups, refugees and independence activists, suggest a devastating pattern of atrocities committed across the territory.

East Timorese who have escaped speak of scores of people being rounded up, the men separated and presumed killed. No independent witnesses are available.

Experienced journalists in Jakarta are reminded of the time lag and the stages of disbelief suffered when they tried to report on the early stages of Cambodia's tragedy from 1975 to 1979, during which time the Khmer Rouge instituted their "Ground Zero" policy of mass extermination.

"In our case, it was the volume of evidence from refugees," said John MacBeth, now bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review in Indonesia. "We were not surprised when the killing fields were later discovered.

"Lots of the people coming out had never actually witnessed the killing, they spoke of people who had disappeared, or the sight of Khmer Rouge returning with blood on their shoes after taking people away.

"But the most credible reports were from those who were only hours out. Once people get into refugee camps, the danger is they're repeating stories from other refugees."

Indonesian military and militias active in West Timor are severely restricting the ability of journalists to obtain those first-hand reports.

Journalists remaining in Dili are subject to the pressures of the lengthy and frightening siege of the UN compound and a growing anger at the Indonesian military's behaviour

"It now appears that the forced removal of the press corps from East Timor is part of a deliberate strategy by the pro- Jakarta militias, and perhaps their allies in the Indonesian military itself, to deny the world access to the story of East Timor," said the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance.

Four Indonesian activists are also missing, said Ging Ginanjar, head of advocacy for the Alliance of Independent Journalists. His statement named Yeni Rosa Damayanti, Adi Pratomo, Anthony Listianto and Yakob Rumbiak, all of whom worked for Kiper and have student activist or political prisoner backgrounds.

Australia's state-run broadcaster has extended its "Radio Australia" service to East Timor, and plans to reach parts of central and western Indonesia from today, an official said.but simply a chaos produced by the actions of the militias and the plots of some officers, compounded by the cowardice of decision makers, military and civilian. The Indonesian establishment has to grasp that its foolishness is profoundly damaging to Indonesia as well as East Timor. It is time to live up to the responsibilities that the word "Merdeka" implies.

Refugees may be used as bargaining chips

Craig Skehan Kupang and Greg Roberts Brisbane -- Aid and church groups are concerned that thousands of East Timorese refugees in camps in West Timor could be used as bargaining chips in Indonesia's stand-off with the international community.

These concerns have been heightened by the refusal of authorities to allow independent monitoring of the camps and reports that thousands of East Timorese are being forcibly driven across the border by the Indonesian military.

Indonesian soldiers, police and anti-independence militia are tightly controlling access to refugee camps and are imposing tough restrictions on the foreign media. Indonesian authorities argue that the refugees are opponents of independence.

UN officials in the West Timorese capital Kupang today estimated that at least 68,000 East Timorese refugees had come across the border while Catholic Church sources in the West Timorese town of Atambua say up to 100,000 refugees have been crowded into just four camps.

The Catholic Church is worried about the safety of the refugees after the reported murder of two pro-independence East Timorese men in Atambua yesterday by militia members. A church official said the men were singled out and shot in front of dozens of other refugees.

Church sources in Atambua and Kupang said militia members had a strong presence in West Timorese territory along the road between Atambua and the border, an 80-minute drive, and were stopping vehicles heading west.

Although it is not possible to confirm the figures, sources in Atambua said more than 40,000 refugees had arrived by yesterday afternoon. Many are staying in church buildings. Some have been taken in by West Timorese families. Others are camped in the open.

In the town of Kepa, 25,000 refugees have arrived. There are about 20,000 in the village of Soa and another 20,000 in Betun. An unknown number are in Kupang and other West Timorese centres, with Amnesty International claiming 8000 are in the town of Kefamenanu.

In Atambua, Catholic workers have asked the Indonesian Government for medical supplies to cope with the refugee flow, and water is in short supply in some places.

With most refugees doing their best to stay away from Government-run camps in West Timor, the province's two bishops -- Bishop Petrus Turang of Kupang and Bishop Antonius Tain Ratu of Atambua -- have opened the doors of church property to the East Timorese.

The leading contender to become President of Indonesia, Mrs Megawati Sukarnoputri, arrived in Kupang, where she was enthusiastically greeted by the Governor of East Timor, Abilio Soares, a strong opponent of independence.

He said the Indonesian Parliament could refuse to ratify East Timor's vote for independence.

Indonesian journalists were allowed to film and photograph Mrs Megawati. Mrs Megawati's staff warned foreign journalists not to follow a convoy to refugee camps on the outskirts of Kupang because it would be "too dangerous".

Australia, UN were warned before voting

Brendan Nicholson, Canberra -- The United Nations and Australia encouraged the Timorese to vote even though intelligence services had warned that the Indonesian military was orchestrating a violent campaign to hold on to the territory.

The strongest warning was delivered on 4 March by Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, which warned that the Indonesian military was "clearly protecting and in some cases operating with" the militia groups.

Although the weight of intelligence analysis made it clear there was no evidence that the Indonesian military would soften its approach, the political decision was taken to accept President B.J. Habibie's assurance that his forces would ensure a peaceful transition.

The same intelligence analysts were last night trying to work out how many East Timorese died since they cast their first vote and the real slaughter began. When this warning was delivered, the official Australian response was that the militias were being supported by rogue elements within the military.

The DIO's view was that the lack of any vigorous action by the commander of the Indonesian armed forces, General Wiranto, to rein in his forces implied he was at least turning a blind eye.

Australian intelligence was able to keep track of militia activities by monitoring the mobile phones used by their leaders and the satellite phones used by Indonesian military commanders to communicate with Jakarta.

Australian military intelligence operatives have intercepted "damning" conversations between militia leaders and commanders in the field.

In July, leaked Indonesian Government documents predicted a win for independence supporters, and outlined a scorched-earth plan. The memo, dated 3 July, said Jakarta should put the army on alert and consider increasing its support for the militia groups.

Early last month an Atlanta-based watchdog group, the Carter Centre, said the Indonesian armed forces were continuing to support the militia groups. If anyone had any doubts about the quality of the warnings, these should have vanished when a militia gang led an attack on a UN regional office in Maliana, on the border with West Timor. UN staff there included three Australian Federal Police officers.

A comprehensive report, prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs with the help of senior military intelligence officers, was handed to the UN by the Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer. The intelligence warnings were not ignored completely.

Australia and the UN accused the Indonesian military of arming and supporting the militia but the decision was taken to push on with the ballot and to rely on the Indonesia forces to prevent violence. In July 1998, Mr Lansell Taudevin, who ran an Australian Government aid project in East Timor, warned officials at Australia's embassy in Jakarta that the Indonesian army was arming and training militia.

Mr Taudevin said he was convinced the worst of the bloodshed could have been avoided if Australia had heeded such warnings and applied more pressure on Jakarta earlier to rein in those supporting the militia groups.

A ride with the militia saves a man

John Aglionby, Kupang -- When Ano Loy saw five Indonesian soldiers walking towards his home in Dili on Monday he was sure they were going to kill him. "They were carrying guns and cans of petrol. All the houses around mine were already empty, so they could only have been coming to me."

Mr Loy, a senior member of East Timor's pro-independence movement, described his extraordinary escape to safety yesterday as he embarked on the final leg from West Timor -- the adjoining territory to East Timor -- to the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

For the previous two days -- after the announcement by the United Nations of East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence from Indonesia -- Mr Loy (not his real name) had seen the army and the pro-Jakarta militias systematically begin the destruction of Dili.

"They had already driven thousands of people from their homes and killed many," he said. "It was my turn now. My luck had run out."

The soldiers, dressed in combat uniform, bandannas made of Indonesia's red and white flag and wearing warpaint on their faces, did not open fire. Instead they gave Mr Loy, 48, an ultimatum.

"They said I had to leave, to go to the port or the police station, or else they would kill me and burn the house. Luckily they did not recognise me or else I am sure they would have killed me immediately."

To prove they meant business, the soldiers doused both the neighboring houses in petrol and set them alight. By the time Mr Loy was ready to leave, his was the only house in the neighborhood not on fire. He is convinced it is now a smouldering ruin.

Just as he, his wife and his children were about to leave, a young man ran into the house telling a terrible story. He had come from the port, where he and some pro-independence friends had been trying to leave on a ship. The women boarded, but the men were dragged away. Five were stabbed in front of him and their bodies dumped in the sea.

Mr Loy decided it would be a death sentence to take his family either to the already overcrowded port or to the police station teeming with more than 10,000 refugees.

"They would definitely have known me at both places and I had heard that families were being separated and did not want to risk not seeing my wife and children again."

So he took an even bigger risk. His family and some other friends asked to join people the militia were forcibly taking in trucks to the border.

"I had no choice. If I wanted to survive I knew I had to get out. By the time we left there were 124 people in seven vehicles -- five pick-ups, one truck and one Jeep.

We were so squashed in but I knew it was our only hope. Almost everyone was crying and sobbing. They had no idea where they were being taken to." The road to the border was packed with vehicles. "Many were not moving. They were just by the roadside. Others were destroyed or burnt."

It took seven hours to reach the border, a journey that normally takes less than three. "The advantage of driving with the militia was that we had no problems with the roadblocks." Mr Loy had disguised himself by brushing his hair differently and wearing a large pair of gold-rimmed glasses.

The scene at the border post at Batugade was chaos. "Cars, trucks and people were everywhere. But this helped us as the soldiers were so overwhelmed ... once again we were just waved through."

After another three hours the convoy stopped for the night in the town of Keva. "There were people everywhere, including many, many militiamen. They were all so proud of what they had done in East Timor, how many houses they had burnt, how many people they had killed for the sake of Indonesia."

Mr Loy's wife told her husband he should go on alone. "She said it was more important for me to get to Jakarta to tell pro- independence leader Jose "Xanana" Gusmao what was happening."

Police station piled with dead

Lindsay Murdoch Dili and Craig Skehan Kupang -- Piles of bodies have been seen stacked in cells at the police headquarters in Dili, while East Timorese forced to flee into Indonesian West Timor have arrived with accounts of murder and continuing intimidation by Indonesian militias.

The bodies were seen on Wednesday by Mrs Ina Bradridge, the Timorese wife of an Australian aid worker, Mr Isa Bradridge, when the couple were taken to the police compound during this week's violence.

Mr Bradridge, of Ballina in New South Wales, said his wife spotted the bodies as she walked the corridors of the police station looking for a toilet. They were in a building she said was once used as a torture cell for political prisoners.

"My wife told me she saw bodies stacked high, thousands of them," Mr Bradridge said. "She smelt the bodies," he said. "I know it is hard to believe, but it is absolutely true. My wife saw arms and legs and dripping blood."

Across the border in West Timor, people forced to flee their homeland have arrived in Kupang with accounts of murder and Indonesian militia violence, which continued even when they had left East Timor.

The refugees, some of whom say they were forcibly expelled, have told aid workers of their ordeal, amid reports that militia using stolen United Nations vehicles are "hunting" for independence supporters.

The head of Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission, Mr Marzuki Darusman, warned today of a "state of lawlessness" in West Timor.

A spokesman for the Catholic aid agency Caritas said in Sydney that the treatment of those forced from East Timor "would have to rank among the crimes of the century". Mr John Scott-Murphy told a Senate inquiry that those forced across the border were being held hostage.

"These people should be viewed as hostages rather than as refugees and it's entirely possible that is the objective in trucking them across the border," Mr Scott-Murphy said.

An estimated 8000 refugees have arrived in Kupang on evacuation flights and on ships, but tens of thousands more have made the dangerous journey into West Timor by road.

Survivors say militia gangs have intercepted groups of refugees and singled out those believed to be independence activists. Most refugees now in West Timor have been herded into camps that are tightly controlled by militia and Indonesian police and soldiers.

One distraught man told how militiamen slaughtered defenceless refugees in an East Timor Catholic church compound.

Another watched terrified at the West Timor port of Atapupu as militia used machetes to kill men alleged to be independence supporters. The victims were among people who arrived by ship from Dili.

"Other men had their hands tied and they were put on trucks and taken away," said a source who is collecting accounts for presentation to the international community. "Militia are checking all the people that are coming in there."

In another incident, four people accused of being pro- independence activists were stabbed to death while trying to board a ship.

People arriving in Kupang who do not have local family or friends are taken to camps on the edge of the town by Indonesian authorities, the biggest of which is Noelbaki. Foreign media trying to talk to refugees at the camp have been attacked by militia.

Members of a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) team left West Timor after they were assaulted and their vehicle destroyed at the camp.

Underground support groups are being established to get people in danger to safe houses or to other parts of Indonesia.

"Many people who are pro-independence are pretending to be pro-autonomy," one source said. "It is like when Jews were trying to travel across occupied Europe." Aid officials expect the number of refugees in West Timor to reach 100,000 in coming days.

One aid worker who is on the run said there are reports of killings in Balibo, west of Dili. "The big danger now is to refugees in West Timor because in many areas the militia are in control," he said. "And the militia are still being being directed by the Indonesian military."

Humanitarian workers say large numbers of refugees are emotionally shattered because they believed the UN team in East Timor would protect them. They talk of the narrow roads from the east being "badlands" where roadblocks instill renewed terror.

The circumstances of people being put on trucks and bused to West Timor differ. Aid workers say some are the families of pro- Indonesia activists and militia members. In other cases, independence supporters are being expelled for fear they will testify on the participation of Indonesian police and military in acts of violence.

And aid workers talk of a third category. "Some people are willing to get on trucks because their villages are burning around them and many people are dead," one source said. "It is matter of degrees of bad."

'Stacks of bodies went up to the roof'

Lindsay Murdoch who arrived in Darwin from Dili -- The destruction of the capital is greater than anybody could imagine. Hundreds of houses are blackened shells. The doors of government offices are ajar. Banks, cafes, hotels, boarding houses, service stations: all burnt or trashed.

One building -- the police station -- hides one of the most shocking of many shocking stories that have emerged so far from East Timor's killing fields.

Two days ago Ina Bradridge, wife of Mr Isa Bradridge, 45, of Ballina, walked the corridors of the station looking for a toilet.

According to Mr Bradridge, who told her story last night after evacuation to Darwin, she happened to glance inside a large building that she knew was once used as a torture cell for political prisoners.

"My wife told me she saw bodies. Thousands of them. Stacks of bodies went up to the roof. I know it is hard to believe but it is absolutely true. My wife saw arms and legs and dripping blood."

Now, from the safety of Australia, Mr Bradridge plans to do a lot of talking on behalf of his wife, who can't speak English, in the next few days. "They [the Indonesian military] are going to obliterate everybody," he said before boarding one of the evacuation trucks with his family. The East Timorese have a choice ... they either leave or die."

Leaving Dili to fly out in the same RAAF shuttles that take out the Bainbridges, we drive in silence through the mass destruction, past street after street of smouldering ruin.

There are looters and thugs carrying pistols who walk with the arrogant swagger of the victor. But Dili is basically empty. In five days 70,000 people have gone.

The bare-footed teenagers with fresh fish tied to their poles are gone. The clapped-out taxis, the naked kids playing on the debris-strewn beachfront, the old people hawking Portuguese-era coins who used to bother us at the hotel, the people who used to sit in the gutter every morning and read the local newspaper. All gone.

Dreadful things have happened: here is a child's bike twisted in the middle of the road; here are pools of dark liquid on the pavement. It looks like blood.

Our drive from the besieged United Nations compound starts with a volley of shots from Indonesian soldiers who are supposed to be guarding us. We all duck for cover, even the 12 soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles who have been ordered to act as human shields on each truck.

We think it's a pretty good bet the thugs on the streets, most of whom we suspect are Indonesian police or soldiers, will not want to hurt their own people. But nobody believes the word of the Indonesian military any more, not in Dili anyway.

Streets are littered with burnt-out buses, cars, and motorbikes. Nobody has bothered to move them out of the way.

Many buildings have BMP or Aitarak painted on them. BMP stands for Besi Merah Puti or Red and White Iron, the militia group based in Liquica, 40 kilometres west of Dili. Aitarak or Thorn is the name of a Dili-based thugs who do the military's dirty work.

On one building somebody has scrawled in Bahasa Indonesian: "the result of a wrong choice", a reference to the August 30 ballot when 78.5 per cent of eligible people voted for independence. We pass under a blue banner which declares that after East Timor's ballot the UN will stay.

We all believed that once, before this evil madness. But here they are departing in fear, almost 500 UN civilian police, international staff and 350 Timorese who were employed by the UN. Only a small group stay behind to try to ensure there is not a slaughter of hundreds of refugees who have been living with us for days in the compound, scared of an attack. We embrace and shed a few tears; hardship provides strong bonds of friendship.

Only a few hundred metres from the compound, trucks parked outside a military barracks are loaded high with furniture. These killers are going, but when? And here is the clue to how to stay alive in Dili: display a red and white cloth, the colours of Indonesia's flag. Every truck in the barracks is draped in red and white.

A lone man on the pushbike wears a red and white headband. Soldiers wear red and white patches. Even the military truck taking us to the airport has a red and white cloth tied to the side mirror.

Our drivers choose a route clear of debris. Past the Catholic cathedral, the one built by the Indonesians, which is untouched, unlike the waterfront home and chapel of Bishop Carlos Belo.

There was terrible bloodshed there when the militia, soldiers and police attacked refugees last Tuesday. You only had to look at the bloodstains to establish that. The truck we are in drives slowly past the Portuguese restaurant where we enjoyed fresh fish most nights and where the militia came one night and made a noose, indicating they wanted to kill some journalists.

The real business end of town is now in the western outskirts in a suburb called Comora. We drive past the two-storey Australian consulate, which was abandoned in great haste two days ago after the militia had spent two days terrorising the diplomats.

The high-iron gate is open and Indonesian soldiers are walking inside. We see the militia in greater numbers along the road from the consulate, towards the airport. One pushes an empty trolley, his head down, almost running. But it's hard to imagine there's anything left to loot.

It is here that for the first time we see ordinary people. Hundreds of women and children are camped out in the grounds of Dili's main police station.

We were greatly relieved to see an RAAF Hercules plane and Australian troops waiting to greet us at Dili airport.

They were tense and business-like, searching our bags and checking names off lists. Shortly before we fly out of the town hidden by thick smoke a Garuda 747 landed and taxied to the vandalised arrival and departure hall.

Commercial flights had stopped days ago so I asked a soldier what it was doing here. "There will be three Garuda flights today to take people to other parts of Indonesia. There will be nothing left for them here. There will be many flights."

As I walked to the plane, dozens of refugees being herded off trucks waved. They were the waves of desperate people.

Herded, sifted and cut off

When Sister Margaret arrived in Kupang yesterday after a 30- minute flight from East Timor's capital Dili, she suddenly realised how lucky she was to be a nun. "I was able to go off with the other sisters and priests to the bishop's house. I was not herded into a truck like an animal and driven off to a camp. We managed to retain some dignity."

For most of the tens of thousands of refugees now in West Timor, dignity is in short supply. Whether they have arrived from East Timor by land, sea or air, the welcome is the same. They are whisked off by police and soldiers to camps guarded by pro- Indonesian militiamen and dumped there for processing.

The first stage is political identification, according to Manuel, an East Timorese who was able to get into the Noelbaki camp eight miles outside Kupang. He said when people arrived their names were checked off against a list of 20,000 known pro- Jakarta supporters. If they were on it, or could demonstrate support for Indonesia, they were put to one side.

All the others were taken to another part of the camp. Here the conditions are much worse, with people squashed together with little food and water.

"Many of the men are then 'taken away for questioning'," said Manuel. "The women have no idea what happens to their husbands. Many have not returned."

One woman said a militia camp guard told her: "You may have got your country but it will be a land full of widows." The woman had arrived in Noelbaki with her husband and two children on Monday.

She has not seen her husband since. Contact with the outside world is all but cut off. People deemed to be pro-independence are not allowed to leave the camps and no foreigners are welcome.

Foreign journalists and members of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees have been stoned, attacked and harassed whenever they have tried to get near the refugees.

In a highly unusual move, no international aid agencies have been asked to provide relief, even though an estimated 100,000 refugees have entered West Timor in the last week.

"Everywhere else in Indonesia -- the government is desperate for our assistance," said the head of one European aid organisation's Kupang office. "But here it is as if they have something to hide."

That something is the forcible eviction and relocation of tens of thousands of people -- supposedly to remove them from the violence, but clearly designed to disrupt the move towards East Timorese independence.

Piet A. Tallo, the provincial governor in West Timor, denies there is any deliberate relocation of the population. "We anticipated a crisis like this and we are doing our best to handle it," he said. "However it is clear that the refugees cannot stay in the camps forever so we have to move them on."

Resentment against the refugees is rising among the local population. An Australian aid worker living in West Timor said the new arrivals would find it very hard to settle. "It appears the government is trying to make life as hard as possible for them."

UN compound looted in East Timor

Patrick Mcdowell, Jakarta -- Drunk on stolen beer, pro- Indonesian militiamen looted the UN compound in East Timor on Friday, smashing equipment and terrifying East Timorese still inside after most of the UN staff were evacuated.

As Indonesian troops fired guns to intimidate the 80 remaining UN workers, several journalists and hundreds of refugees, militia extremists chanted for them to be burned out. Gunfire sent two elderly women scrambling over the wall into the compound, shredding their arms on barbed wire. Estimates of the death toll in East Timor has ranged from 600 to 7,000.

In New York, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said martial law has failed to restore order in East Timor and urged Indonesia to accept foreign military help.

"The time has clearly come for Indonesia to seek help from the international community to fulfill its responsibility to bring order and security to the people of East Timor," he told a news conference.

Even though Australia, New Zealand, France and many other countries have offered troops to a peacekeeping force, Annan said all governments "have made it clear that it's too dangerous for them to go in without the consent of Indonesia." In Jakarta, the defense minister, Gen. Wiranto, said: "We do not reject the UN peacekeeping force, but it is not the appropriate time."

Protesters in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, protested the international pressure on their country by urinating and smearing chicken dung on US and Australian flags before burning them.

President Clinton called the attacks on the compound "simply unacceptable," and said it was clear the Indonesian military was "aiding and abetting the militia violence." Clinton was in Hawaii on his way to a Pacific Rim summit in New Zealand.

Clinton's statement came a day after he suspended the Pentagon's few formal contacts with the Indonesian military and threatened to suspend economic assistance to the country.

Comparisons to Kosovo and Cambodia have increasingly been made as television footage shows men, women and children, their hands raised, being herded at gunpoint from burning homes. Indonesia calls the claims of forcible deportation "nonsense," but UN officials report that an estimated quarter of the 850,000 East Timorese have fled their homes.

At least four UN staffers were killed by militiamen in the past week. About 350 staffers were evacuated Friday from the compound in Dili and flown to Darwin, Australia.

Those who stayed behind were awaiting a visit Saturday by a team of ambassadors from the UN Security Council. "Morale is actually pretty high," a UN information officer said in a telephone interview. "We're all happy we were able to stay." But the conditions around the compound could not be described as cheerful.

Militiamen drunk on looted beer entered the parking lot outside the walls and demanded several UN vehicles, UN officials said. The militiamen were refused, so they smashed up the vehicles and looted whatever they could.

A UN official said some of the refugees left the compound and fled into the surrounding hills. As they were climbing uphill, shots were fired at them. The government has acknowledged the existence of rogue army elements and claims the problems can be solved through martial law imposed earlier this week.

However, the thoroughness of the savagery and depopulation in the past week suggests complicity at a very high level. Refugees who have been forcibly shipped to neighboring West Timor remain under the control of the Indonesian military and the militias. Foreign journalists and aid workers have been threatened and attacked if they try to enter.

Meanwhile, Bishop Carlos Belo, the spiritual leader of East Timor, arrived in Lisbon on his way to Rome for an audience with Pope John Paul II. He called for a war crimes tribunal. "We can verify that there is a genocide, a cleansing," said Belo, co- winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize. The crisis has threatened the stability of this country of 216 million people scattered across 13,000 islands, simmering in turmoil since longtime dictator Suharto was toppled in street protests last year.

Time to pray, and run the militia gauntlet

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili -- Pat Burgess wipes away the tears. He doesn't want to make the life-or-death decision. The Australian political officer working for the United Nations has just been told that staff and their dependants, including Timorese, are evacuating from the besieged UN compound in Dili.

But everybody inside knows that if we leave behind 1,500 refugees who have crammed with us into the compound the young men among them would be accused of being pro-independence and probably killed.

Burgess, like many other UN staff, hates the decision to evacuate that was made on the other side of the world in New York. But he has no choice. "Tell the young men to run," he tells his interpreter, wiping away more tears.

Burgess knows very well the lies that Indonesia's military and police officers have told the UN for months. Promises that the Indonesian armed forces and police would not harm the refugees mean nothing. Asked what he thinks will happen to the women and children, he says: "They will probably rape the women."

Families sit around candles and pray for a long time. Some weep. They talk in whispers. These are intimate moments we do not want to disturb. Only the gunshots and distant explosions break the near silence.

But as the night wears on we step over babies and children sleeping on concrete and distribute our remaining food. It is only a few cans of corned beef and some packets of noodles but we are on our way to Darwin, away from the gunshots, the explosions, the orchestrated terror. Or so we think.

The men run in the early hours as smoke continues to rise into the air from dozens of fires across the largely deserted town. So too do many of the young women, particularly the pretty ones. For 24 years Indonesian soldiers in East Timor have violated the women, for their selfish pleasure, with impunity.

As they run, fresh gunfire erupts. Short, sharp volleys. Soon some of the men return exhausted after trying to climb the hill that rises almost vertically from the back of the compound. They report that the Indonesian troops who are supposed to be protecting us from attack fired over their heads, forcing them to return.

But soon others try other routes and find ways past the troops. With the fittest leading the way, others follow, including mothers carrying babies, cooking utensils and their few possessions.

As they shuffle into the darkness many of us are deeply concerned, justifying our helplessness by thinking that the East Timorese have shown remarkable resilience during decades of immense suffering. We can only hope their instincts will keep them alive.

When dawn breaks the compound appears strangely bigger, with spaces free of masses of humanity. I won't reveal how many of the refugees are left because it is better to keep the killers and rapists guessing.

We don't know whether to be relieved because we don't know if the refugees made it to the mountains outside Dili, where we hope they will not starve until they can return safely to the town or outside help arrives.

At 1.30am yesterday Ian Martin, head of the UN mission in East Timor, succumbs to pressure from his staff to delay our evacuation for 24 hours. This may have saved the life of 70-year-old Anne Forbes of Ballarat. We were still here when she reached the compound yesterday.

The Sister of Mercy who came to East Timor to teach English under the wing of the Catholic relief agency Caritas trembles as she tells her disturbing story. Since August 1 she has been staying at an orphanage at Dare, a village in the mountains above Dili. She has seen Dili ablaze, heard the constant gunshots, and heard the fears of the hundreds who fled to Dare.

"On Monday or Tuesday morning, I can't remember exactly, we watched two boats go out from Dili," she says. "We thought they were heading out to West Timor but they only went out a distance and then came straight back. We fear they were dropping bodies."

Sister Anne was staying with the remarkable Sister Lourdes, who runs an orphanage in Dare. A 10-year-old girl arrived a couple of days ago in the mountains from the town of Liquica, 40 kilometres west of Dili. She told of seeing her brother with a machete stuck in his chest and bodies piled high. Sister Anne cries as she continues. "Another little girl, she's only five, recites how she saw three men shot in her parents' garden."

Sister Anne says she cannot imagine how many people are dead. "There's a real frenzy out there. A nephew of one of our Timorese sisters was killed with another man near UNAMET [the UN compound]. The militia hammered nails into his head and cut off his flesh. They told other people they were going to eat the flesh but I doubt they did that."

Sister Anne says it was one of the toughest decisions of her life to leave the orphanage. But with food short she felt guilty every time she sat down to eat.

When she drove into Dili's deserted streets yesterday morning with a German priest, Father Albert Garim, they stopped their car outside a Jesuit's house, where militia looters had loaded furniture, two refrigerators and two motorcycles onto their truck.

"Father Garim told them to get the hell out of there," Sister Anne says. "But you know the funny thing is that they were greatly embarrassed and knelt down and kissed his hand and rosary beads.

"You see these people are East Timorese and Catholics. Up in the hills the people are spending hours praying that they end all this and see that they are all Timorese in their hearts." Police took Father Garim away. His whereabouts are unknown.

Sister Anne's handbag was rifled as a military officer told her in broken English: "You are probably doing good work in East Timor. But it is hurting some people." Sister Anne was near exhaustion when she reached the UN compound. "How can teaching a little bit of English hurt anybody?" she asks.

She expects to be evacuated with the rest of us this morning but she will leave East Timor with great reluctance. As half a dozen dirty but broadly smiling children rush her in the compound and kiss her hand, she weeps.

"I think about the future of these children," she says. "What is so special about Indonesia that nobody will directly call them the liars, thugs and mongrels that they are? Why can't the world help?"

Marked for execution

Louise Williams -- Catholic Church leaders were hiding in remote East Timor mountains last night after pro-Jakarta militia gangs went on a rampage of bloody retribution, murdering at least 14 priests and nuns and stabbing the Bishop of Baucau.

Six nuns were reported killed in Baucau, four nuns in Dili and three priests in Suai, said a spokeswoman for Caritas Australia, the Catholic overseas aid agency. The Bishop of Baucau, the Most Rev Basilio do Nascimento, was stabbed before escaping into the mountains.

Father Francisco Barreto, the local director of Caritas, was believed to have been murdered just outside the capital, Dili.

He had warned the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, during a visit to Australia in April that terrible violence would be orchestrated by the Indonesian military.

One account of the attack on the six Canossian sisters in Baucau, 115 kilometres east of Dili, said the militia thugs had forced them into a forest where they were murdered.

Reports of the atrocities emerged as Indonesia announced last night that a five-member United Nations Security Council team would travel to East Timor tomorrow, but Jakarta remained strongly opposed to any UN peacekeeping force.

In the worst slaughter to date, the UN confirmed that at least 100 people, including three priests, had died in an attack earlier this week on refugees sheltering in the church at Suai, on the remote east coast.

The dead priests were Father Hilario Madeira, who had long been an outspoken critic of military and militia abuses, Father Francisco Soares and Father Tarcisius Dewanto.

The savage attacks are the first deliberate violations of the sanctity of the church under Indonesian rule and have robbed the East Timorese of their last refuge.

The militias appear to be using a death list of independence sympathisers compiled before the ballot to systematically hunt down their targets.

Many of the priests and nuns are sheltering on Mate Bean, the mountain of death, where tens of thousands were killed by bombing in the first years of the Indonesian occupation. It is not known whether they have any supplies or access to medical treatment.

A communications blackout in Dili has made it impossible to confirm the number of dead or injured in the attacks and Catholic networks in Australia and Indonesia are working with the Vatican to try to establish the facts.

Some reports have been received by overseas diocese offices through e-mail from outlying Catholic schools and churches in East Timor, describing attacks on churches and buildings where nuns and priests were sheltering with thousands of refugees.

A Caritas Australia spokeswoman, Ms Jane Woolford, said: "We don't even know where many of our local staff are. We hold grave fears for their safety as many of them have been on death militia lists before and have been attacked trying to deliver aid." Many church leaders were identified as independence supporters and the Catholic Church became an important symbol of opposition to the Muslim-dominated Indonesian Government.

The leader of the Catholic Church in East Timor, Bishop Carlos Belo, was evacuated to Darwin earlier this week after his offices and home were burnt to the ground, with scores killed.

Father Jose San Juan, also recently evacuated to Darwin, said: "I fear many, many priests and sisters will be killed if they stay. In the past the church was a safe place, even from the Indonesian military, but if they can attack the bishop then that's it."

The militia units were stacked with Indonesian operatives, said Father San Juan, a Filipino from the Salesian order. "I saw the militias attacking churches before I got out and many of them were speaking in Indonesian, not the local language, so I do not believe they are all East Timorese," he said. "They were yelling at people to get out or be killed, and if they refused they just shot or stabbed them. The Indonesian police and military were just standing there."

The chairman of Caritas Australia, Bishop Hilton Deakin, said: "These murderous attacks on the church are part of a much wider unjust genocide. When Catholic Church members, who have offered relief and refuge to East Timorese, are struck down, we realise there is no respect for any life in East Timor."

Ms Ana Noronha, director of the East Timor Human Rights Commission, said information on the deaths had been sent to the United Nations. "It is now obvious that the violence is reaching everyone and that there is a pattern of the Catholic Church being attacked."

East Timorese rounded up in Java

Sydney -- Indonesian military were rounding up East Timorese on the main Indonesian island of Java, one of Australia's leading pro-Timor activists said Thursday.

Melbourne Bishop Hilton Deakin, chairman of the Catholic charity Caritas Australia and the East Timor Human Rights Centre, said he had been told the Indonesian military was making a concerted effort to target East Timorese in Java.

"The Indonesian military has started rounding up East Timorese, especially pro-independence supporters, on Java," he said.

"They're being taken to camps, where they can cause less harm. It's exactly the same as what has happened in East Timor where thousands of people have been forcibly deported," he added. "You can't call it ethnic-cleansing but it's certainly dreadful," he added. "It's concerted and it's obviously planned."

Bishop Deakin said the news was relayed to him Thursday by the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT) office in Jakarta. He was unable to make an estimate of how many people were being rounded up.

Killing will go on until UN leaves: Dili Mayor

Kupang -- The mayor of the East Timorese capital Dili warned Wednesday that the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) had to leave the territory or the killing and destruction there would continue.

"If they don't go, it would be better if we just destroy everything, because they have destroyed everything of ours," said Mateus Haia during an impromptu press conference in a hotel lobby in this West Timorese capital.

"We are one island with the West Timorese. Why on earth should we be separated? We are going to continue our armed struggle for as long as it takes.

"If foreign troops come in, we will resist and shoot them. We have 25,000 weapons. The UN are the new colonialists. First we had the Portuguese, now we have the UN," he said.

Haia, who like other officials in East Timor was approved by the Indonesian government, echoed pro-Jakarta groups which have accused UNAMET of rigging the territory's self-determination vote.

"We completely reject the result because UNAMNET was so biased. They didn't want to accept us at any stage of the voting process," he said.

The result announced by the United Nations on Saturday showed an overwhelming 78.5 percent of eligible East Timorese had opted for independence 24 years after their territory was invaded by Indonesia.

But Haia disputed the figures. "We counted that in nine districts we had more than 60 percent [of the vote] and the rest was 50-50," he said.

Asked why he rejected the results when Indonesian President B.J. Habibie had accepted them, Haia replied: "He is just the president, he has never been in the field."

Pro-Indonesian militia, in many cases backed by army soliders and police according to witnesses, have attacked and driven out all but one of the UNAMET posts in East Timor.

Only the Dili compound is left, and that is under seige with access to food stores cut off and communications dead as at least 1,300 refugees crowd inside. The mayor said he had flown into Kupang to bring his family out and would return to Dili on Thursday. "No one is left in Dili, everyone is at the police station, at the harbor or has run to the hills," he said.

But he added that the army could not be expected to control "a guerrilla war" by the militias in response to the vote. "It's very hard for the authorities to do anything," he said.

"Everything could return to normal in one to two weeks if UNAMET accepts responsibility for the mistakes it has made. As long as they don't take responsibility there will never be peace. We don't trust the UN any more. They are not neutral."

Eyewitness hears troops planning killings

Compere: Rafael Epstein has also been speaking to Inga Lemp, who was based in Baukau for the past month. She's been telling Rafael Epstein of conversations that she followed on a radio scanner. She heard Indonesian elite Kopassus troops and military intelligence directing and aiding militia activity and giving the militia thugs directions to kill the unofficial foreign observers.

Inga Lemp: One was, you know, who would pay for the food of the militia at different campaigning events that were pro- autonomy where the militia participated? There was another one of retrieving rifles at a, from a site, a town called Kasar [phonetic] where the [inaudible] militia and the Mahedian [phonetic] militia from [inaudible] together, a week prior to that had laid down the arms in a symbolic laying down of arms ceremony publicly; so the whole conversation was who was to go, retrieve them, when? Would they do it on the 30th when UNAMET was too busy with the election, be observing them and watching them and so on? And the last and probably most clear one was a direct threat on our lives, as I said, OP observers, where the militia heads of the town's leading family were told to stop our car, kill us and throw our bodies in the river.

Rafael Epstein: So the militia were told to do that by the military?

Inga Lemp: Right. And there was conversation about how to do it. At one point they said they should stop the car and let us walk to Dili, which is a likelihood of getting us to disappear in the woods, but the river was mentioned three times, our bodies in the river.

Rafael Epstein: What other orders did the military give specifically about solving [phonetic] the local population?

Inga Lemp: They were supposed to keep their radios on air twenty-four hours, that they were supposed to be on standby is the word they constantly used. That as soon as the opposition would light a fire, then they would really let it explode, but they were trying to hold out till the vote and then afterwards all hell would break loose.

Rafael Epstein: So, there were orders that after the vote the violence would escalate?

Inga Lemp: Right, but they kept saying if the other side ignited [phonetic] before it, then they would go ahead and fight back.

Compere: Inga Lemp has been based in Bacau for over a month. She's from the International Federation for East Timor Observer Project. She, like most others, has had to quit and was speaking with Rafael Epstein in Darwin.

Anti-Australian sentiments aroused

Jakarta -- Antiforeigner sentiments marked a series of demonstrations which took place across the capital on Wednesday.

A group of some 200 students from private Sahid University staged a protest in front of the Australian Embassy on Jl. Rasuna Said in South Jakarta. Several of the protesters were able to enter the embassy's compound, where they lowered the Australian flag and raised the Indonesian flag in its place.

Another group of several hundred protesters from the People's Sovereignty and National Unity Struggle staged a demonstration in front of the United Nations office on Jl. M.H. Thamrin in Central Jakarta, where they burned the UN and Australian flags.

Chanting the national anthem, Indonesia Raya, the protesters in front of the Australian Embassy said they were retaliating against the recent burning of an Indonesian flag in Melbourne, Australia.

After entering the embassy's compound and raising an Indonesian flag, the students returned to their campus on Jl. Sahardjo in South Jakarta at 3pm.

A security officer at the embassy, Haryanto, said a few minutes before the protesters dispersed, an embassy staff member gave him a letter expressing the Australian government's regret over "recent violent protests within Indonesian consular premises in Australia".

At 5.30pm, an embassy employee, assisted by two embassy security guards and a local staff member, lowered the Indonesian flag and raised the Australian flag.

Meanwhile, the protesters in front of the UN office denounced the results of the East Timor ballot, accusing the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) of manipulating the ballot count to favor the pro-independence camp.

Two other groups, the Nationalist Youth Unity and the Communication Forum of the Children of Veterans of East Timor's Seroja Operation, later joined the protest. Separately, some 150 members of the National Mandate for the Struggle of Democracy gathered on Wednesday on the Taman Ria flyover in Central Jakarta to protest military violence in East Timor.

They demanded President B.J. Habibie and the military be held responsible for the ongoing massacres in East Timor which followed the UN-sponsored ballot on August 30. The demonstration broke up at 3.40pm.

Earlier in the morning, some 30 East Timorese youths, carrying the flag of the National Resistance Council for an Independent East Timor, staged a demonstration in front of the defense ministry to demand the military's withdrawal from the territory.

Unable to meet ministry officials, the demonstrators moved to the US Embassy, where they called on the US government to endorse the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in East Timor.

Separately, members of the Democratic People's Party (PRD) staged a protest against the House of Representatives' deliberation of the national security bill. "The bill, if enacted, will be used by the military to suppress the democratic movement in the country," the protesters said.

The PRD members attempted to march to the Ministry of Defense, but were blocked by riot police at the Farmers Monument in Central Jakarta.

Fear and looting: life on the streets of Dili

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili -- The looting never stops. It's brazen now: soldiers, police and militia are stealing whatever they can carry.

Dozens of trucks full with televisions, refrigerators and other household goods are parked on the road outside Dili's military headquarters, ready to make the seven-hour dash across East Timor to the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur.

United Nations officials who went under armed escort to Dili's wharf yesterday saw looted goods still wrapped waiting to be loaded aboard Indonesian ships. There were bikes, mattresses, coffee tables and countless other items.

"All the good stuff like televisions apparently went early," said one of six UN officials to venture outside the besieged UN compound.

UN officials have seen soldiers on motorbikes, men driving stolen UN vehicles and military trucks loaded with goods looted from shops, offices, hotels, homes and factories. "They intend to leave nothing behind," said one UN official.

Indonesia's armed forces and their proxy militia have embarked on a campaign to steal everything of value from Dili and destroy all major infrastructure, including electricity plants, water supplies, the telephone networks and fuel storage supplies. Power, water and telephones were cut abruptly on Tuesday night.

A senior officer at military headquarters has been overheard to say that nothing will be left for independent East Timor. When up to 20,000 Indonesian police and soldiers based in the territory have fled, the main roads and bridges are expected to be detonated.

"Make no mistake, this is being directed from Jakarta," said a high-ranking Western official in the UN compound. "This is not a situation where a few gangs of rag-tag militia are out of control. As everybody here knows, it has been a military operation from start to finish."

UN officials estimate the damage bill will be billions of dollars. They say that it would take decades to rebuild the territory's basic infrastructure.

For 24 hours a thick pall of smoke has hung over the almost deserted town. Throughout yesterday a dozen fires could be seen at any one time. Huge explosions are heard every hour or so, indicating the Indonesians are using incendiary bombs to set buildings ablaze.

A UN storage depot less than one kilometre from the UN's headquarters was alight. UN vehicles were also burning. All commercial and many government buildings have been either looted or set alight. An entire block of central Dili is a smouldering ruin. The bakery where UN staff and journalists got the only fresh bread in town is gone. So too is the supermarket, the barber's shop, the bookshop and the clinic.

The waterfront Hotel Turismo, which had been our home for many months, has been looted and the rooms and restaurant destroyed. All my belongings have been stolen: new digital camera, mobile telephone, clothes. Most colleagues in the UN compound are in the same position.

The colonial home of East Timor's former governor apparently has been destroyed. It was a prime target because it was rented two months ago by the Herald. The militia made repeated threats to kill us.

According to the UN all of the houses rented by foreigners have been looted and either wrecked or burnt. Fifty of them had been occupied by UN staff until everybody was forced to flee.

A house rented by several Australian Federal Police officers was burnt overnight. "We've lost everything," one of them said. "I have no idea what has happened to the wonderful family that looked after us."

We knew our house was doomed when the militia came around one night and painted a silver arrow on the fence, indicating it was marked for attack. The military commander's house next door is untouched.

For days Dili has remained deserted except for rampaging militia, police or soldiers. A UN official described a group of dazed-looking people walking towards Dili's wharf, where more than 4,000 people waited for ships.

Residents of Becora, an independence stronghold, said the militia and military went from door to door dragging people out who were hiding inside. They were loaded onto trucks at gunpoint.

The UN has hundreds of reports of people being kidnapped and put on planes and ships against their will with nothing but the clothes they stand in. Some were even put on a ship departing for Irian Jaya. "The entire town has been cleansed of people," an official said.

The doors of most houses have been left open by looters. Some residents who risked execution to return to their homes were seen picking through smouldering rubble yesterday.

Militia, police and soldiers have been seen roaring along streets on motorbikes and in cars, many of them stolen. An American activist, Mr Allan Nairn, who sneaked past Indonesian soldiers guarding the UN compound at dawn, returned after three hours to say nearby houses were deserted.

"One old man hiding out shared a plate of rice with me," he said. "I was just climbing over back fences and walking through people's living rooms. The doors were all open."

When the militia eventually saw Mr Nairn, he wrapped a red and white cloth across his body, the colours of Indonesia's flag, and walked down the centre of the streets back to the compound.

When the two-vehicle UN convoy arrived to check a food warehouse, militia started to gun the motors on the motorbikes they were riding shouting threats.

A shot was fired at the departing convoy. A second five- vehicle UN convoy was confronted by a gang of 50 armed militia. A tense stand-off developed. Indonesian soldiers who were supposed to be providing security did nothing.

The convoy managed to obtain a small amount of water before one of the militia smashed the rear window of a UN vehicle with a machete. The convoy dashed backed to the UN compound, where basic supplies of food and water are quickly running out.

About 100 UN staff and 2,000 refugees sheltering in the compound have only a day or two of basic supplies left. "The warehouse is probably being looted and burnt at this moment," a UN official said.

UN worker says soldier shot him

Darwin -- An American UN worker recovering in an Australian hospital after being wounded in East Timor said Wednesday that he was shot by an Indonesian soldier.

Earl Candler was airlifted to the northern Australian city of Darwin after being shot twice in the abdomen while driving in an unmarked UN vehicle through the town of Liquica four days ago.

He said his attacker was a member of the Indonesian military sent to East Timor to maintain law and order after pro-Indonesia militias unleashed a campaign of terror in the aftermath of last week's vote for independence.

"I see him point his weapon, and me and my driver got down as low as we could go," Candler told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television. "The impression I got was that there was an Australian subject who looked a lot like me, and he was their target and they got me by mistake." Australians might be targeted by the militias because of their perceived support for Timorese independence.

Candler said he was hit by several bullets but only two pierced his body armor. "I got hit twice. One of the rounds passed right through me, and the other one was lodged, and the doc took it out," Candler said in another television interview.

The bullet removed by doctors was displayed in a jar next to Candler's bed. Nobody was available at the United Nations' Darwin base to provide Candler's hometown.

Jakarta's bloody hands: military back killings

The Indonesian military -- presented to the world as providing security while East Timor prepares for independence -- is in fact orchestrating the brutal campaign of killings and intimidation, according to secret United Nations assessments.

The documents show that in the past week the 14,000 soldiers serving under officers hand-picked by the Defence Minister, General Wiranto, have condoned and in some cases directed attacks by pro-Jakarta militia.

And during many assaults the military has ordered the 8,000- strong Indonesian police contingent in East Timor to remain passive -- with open threats to them or their families if they intervene.

The revelations come as pro-Jakarta militias stepped up their attacks following Saturday's announcement that 78.5 per cent of voters in last Monday's ballot had chosen independence over autonomy with Indonesia.

Up to 25 deaths have been reported in Dili and there are unconfirmed reports of 20 people massacred in a church in Maliana.

As the situation deteriorated, the Australian Defence Force increased its readiness for a possible evacuation with the frigates HMAS Darwin and HMAS Anzac joining the navy's high-speed catamaran in Darwin at the weekend. There are also two United States warships in the port from the joint exercise with Australian forces, Operation Crocodile.

At the same time Australia is pressing for a "coalition of the willing", comprising Australia and a few other countries, to quickly provide a basic international security force to protect Australians and other UN personnel in East Timor.

The Prime Minister raised the proposal with Indonesia's President Habibie on Friday but Mr Howard said yesterday that foreign troops would not be sent in without Indonesian and UN Security Council approval.

One of the leaked UN documents relates to the wounding on Friday of a US policeman working with the UN team which was condemned yesterday by President Clinton.

The American had been set upon by militia thugs at the instigation of the military and local police who tried to intervene were told to stand back, it said. He was recovering from gunshot wounds in Darwin yesterday.

In another attack, militia were ordered by a group of Indonesian officers to shoot at trucks carrying UN staff and journalists.

The leaked documents prepared by the United Nations mission to East Timor (UNAMET) conclude that there had been "a deliberate strategy to force UNAMET to withdraw from certain regions back to Dili".

They found that in some cases during the past few days there have been "joint operations" including the burning of houses and attacks on civilians as well as UN personnel, including UN civilian police (Civpol).

"Civpol strongly believe this series of incidents was orchestrated by TNI and Polri [Indonesian police] and that the militias acted with precise instructions as to their targets and the types of actions to conduct," one report says.

In the western towns of Aileu, Ainaro, Maliana, Liquica and Same there are specific accounts of abuses, including a threat to burn down a UN compound by a militia leader who said he was acting on instructions from the local major.

In Liquica, Indonesian police and military personnel were not only assisting the militias in an attack "but also shooting themselves at UN vehicles and their passengers". [By Craig Skehan, Hamish McDonald, David Jenkins and Mark Dodd]

Former commander doubts army neutrality

Jakarta -- Enforcing a state of emergency in East Timor will not improve the situation because the military is unlikely to be neutral, said a former military commander in the province.

Former Udayana commander Maj. Gen. (ret.) Theo Syafei noted on Tuesday the "emotional relationship" of the military with the prointegration militia, which, he said, "was formed by the TNI (Indonesian Military) to help us fight the Fretilin."

Fretilin is the former name of the pro-independence organization and its Falintil militia. "They [the military] would not hurt the [pro-integration] militia, who are like their distant brothers," he said after addressing a talk show on East Timor.

"The military's history in the territory is too emotional and it is unlikely that they can be neutral if they are take over security command in the territory now," Theo said, citing the death of some 5,000 soldiers and 100,000 East Timorese during the military operations.

"The best way to handle the situation is the arrival of a UN peacekeeping force," said Theo, now an executive of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

Newly released pro-independence leader Jose Alexandre Xanana Gusmao said of the decision, "Honestly, I do not know what for ... there is no population anymore in the villages, the population has been driven out to Kupang and Ainaro."

"Why are more battalions are being sent to East Timor? TNI is killing the population, TNI is destroying and plundering the belongings of the population," he said Tuesday.

Xanana also said that he "foresees many people will die of starvation and illnesses in the coming weeks". "I don't know the death toll, but I am quite certain that what is happening there is horrifying," Xanana said.

"I think the international community and the government is well aware of the situation in East Timor, but what we see right now is that the government either does not have the capacity to control the situation, or it does not want to have the capacity to control the situation," Xanana said.

Xanana reiterated Tuesday his appeal to the international community "to help stop the violence and the killings of the East Timorese".

When Xanana was arrested in 1992, Theo led the East Timor special military command. Theo said the TNI should accept the "bitter pill" of rejection of autonomy by East Timorese as reflected in the ballot results. "It should be considered an expensive lesson" for the military and the government, he said.

In the beginning, many East Timorese supported integration, he added. The TNI should "also persuade the militia to enter certain enclaves in the territory's western parts (uncontrolled by Falintil), or herd them toward Atambua in West Nusa Tenggara."

The military is responsible for "rehabilitating the morality of the militia," he said without elaborating.

Presidential military advisor Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo told The Jakarta Post that while the state of emergency was now needed because the police could no longer uphold the law there, "The military has no interest in keeping this status for a long time. The faster an end to the status, the better ... "

"A good commander will do his best to ensure that the situation recovers as soon as possible."

Sayidiman added it would be better for Indonesia if the UN peacekeeping force took over the responsibility of security and order in East Timor. "All this commotion is partly caused by the international community, including the UN," he said.

Head of the National Mandate Party's international relations department, Bara Hasibuan, also called for the presence of a UN peacekeeping force.

However he suggested that a rapid emergency force comprising of two or three nations could be assembled in the interim since a larger UN presence would probably take several weeks to organize.

"We can no longer trust the military or the Habibie government to carry out their obligation to ensure security," he said while adding that the UN Security Council should also issue a strong ultimatum to press Indonesian military forces out of East Timor. "If necessary they could use the threat of an economic embargo," he told the Post.

Researcher Muhammad A. Hikam urged the military to review the decision on enforcing martial law in the province.

He said this was needed to avoid a prolonged security problem. Hikam added that the TNI should consider its participation in a UN peacekeeping force "because nobody would trust its neutrality" if it held sole responsibility for security.

Insisting on martial law "would give Indonesia a bad image in the international forum." If Indonesia failed in the agreement, "the UN should implement its contingency plan to improve the situation," he said.

The Jakarta-based National Front and the National Reform Movement demanded that President B.J. Habibie should state he would not seek reelection, or resign.

In a statement signed by Lt. Gen. (ret.) A. Kemal Idris and Subroto, former minister of mines and energy, they said "For Mr. Habibie to remain obstinate in his determination to be reelected president would cause the nation's disintegration."

A leader of the Democratic People's Party (PRD), Faisol Riza, lambasted the decision of a state of military emergency as a virtual "coup d'etat" by the military because the UN-sponsored ballot had clearly voiced the will of most East Timorese.

The PRD said the government and the TNI "repeated their mistake" when they invaded East Timor before "forcing it to join Indonesia".

In Yogyakarta, researcher Lambang Trijono of the Center for Security and Peace Studies said, "The declaration of martial law would likely only serve to give the TNI space to provide full support for proautonomy militia," he told the Post.

Military researcher Indria Samego however hailed the decision, saying it was the last resort to calm down tension in East Timor, and to save Indonesia's image in the international forum.

"The world would no longer have confidence in Indonesia if the it failed to maintain security in the territory in accordance with the May 5 agreement," he said.

Agus Muhyidin, chairman of the House of Representatives' Special Committee deliberating the bill on state security, concurred and said that based on the 1959 law on state of emergency, Habibie had full authority to make such a decision without consulting the House.

The United Development Party had on Monday rejected Habibie's proposal of declaring martial law as one option to overcome East Timor's situation.

Army provoked militia attack on Red Cross

Bernard Lagan, Darwin -- Eyewitnesses have told how the Indonesian military combined with militias in Dili to storm Catholic Church and Red Cross compounds, forcing out thousands of East Timorese people sheltering there.

Speaking after his evacuation to Darwin, the head of the Red Cross in Dili, Mr Jean Luc Metzker, said that on Monday morning militia men armed with automatic weapons broke into the Red Cross compound where 2,000 people, including children as young as two- day-old babies, were sheltering. They were backed by Indonesian police, who surrounded the compound's perimeter so people could not flee, and by Indonesian Army units who pulled up in army trucks to help transport the refugees away.

They fired into the windows of the Red Cross compound, over the heads of the thousands of terrified people including another 3,000 sheltering in Catholic Archbishop Carlos Belo's compound next door.

An Irish freelance journalist, Mr Sean Steele, watching from a nearby hotel roof, told the Herald that Indonesian Army officers were directing the militias, yelling: "Go on, attack them, attack them, they support independence."

Mr Metzker, a Swiss national, said: "It was an incredible feeling of panic among the 2,000 people. They were shooting in the air, shooting at the buildings, then they shot over the heads of the people. "Then they started smashing the windows, making a lot of noise and creating a feeling of terrible panic."

Before being flown out of Dili by an RAAF Hercules, he said he had seen 50,000 to 60,000 refugees being herded along roads and beaches towards a large Indonesian police compound in Dili. They had been told they would be trucked to West Timor. He said there was no question that a forced removal of tens of thousand of East Timorese who supported independence was under way.

Mr David Wimhurst, the spokesman for the UN mission in East Timor, also relocated from Dili to Darwin, said the Indonesian military had broken an agreement with the UN to look after refugees' security.

As the UN dwindles, Dili burns

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili -- There are not many of us left, here in the United Nations' besieged compound. It seems the military's operation, to terrify the UN and media out of Dili, is running right on schedule.

Large parts of Dili were ablaze last night as about 80 UN officials, including 40 Australian Federal police, and 10 foreign journalists, desperately resisted pressure from the military, police and militia to evacuate to Darwin.

The compound had come under direct fire yesterday and the utter despair was articulated by Ian Martin, the head of the UN mission in East Timor, as a line of mothers queued at the door, waiting to see a UN doctor.

The first mother was crying. Along the line, others were either crying or appeared distressed. Asked what would happen to them if we all left, Mr Martin could not answer. Asked what would happen if the killers came over the fence, he hesitated, then said: "We die."

Mrs Aida Ramos Horta de Assis, the sister of the exiled 1996 Nobel Peace prize winner, Mr Jose Ramos Horta, arrived in a distressed state at the compound last night, after being threatened by an Indonesian military officer who broke into her home. She said the man demanded to know of her: "You are in Indonesia now. Why do you want independence?"

When she was leaving the house, an Indonesian military officer had told her: "Don't go to UNAMET because we are going to bombard it tonight."

UN sources said East Timor's military commander, Colonel Noer Muis, had been sacked and a high-ranking military intelligence officer appointed to replace him. When told of the sacking, Colonel Muis is believed to have wept.

Last night, UN officials negotiated with the new military commander to replace the police who were supposedly guarding the compound with recently arrived Indonesian combat troops. As the police left, they fired volleys of shots into the air. But the UN officials have been told the new commander has imposed a 9pm curfew. Over the next two days, anybody seen on the streets would be warned and told to go home. After that, curfew breakers would be executed on sight.

Diplomats and analysts believe months of violence and intimidation directed at the independence movement has been masterminded by Indonesia's covert military intelligence services. Mr Martin said he could not rule out a complete evacuation "if the security situation makes it irresponsible to stay". With gun shots ringing out as he spoke, Mr Martin said the UN's continued presence in East Timor was symbolically important to the East Timorese, whose vote on August 30 to reject Indonesia's rule has triggered the bloodbath in the territory. But there are now no UN staff outside Dili.

Earlier yesterday, the UN evacuated about 100 staff from the town of Baucau after militia, Indonesian soldiers and police opened fire on its compound in the town. Armed militia repeatedly tried to force their way into the compound but were stoppedby Indonesian soldiers. UN staff dived for cover as shots slammed into UN buildings.

About 35 people -- mainly Australians -- were evacuated from the Australian consulate in Dili yesterday after the militia terrorised people inside throughout the previous night. The militia fired repeated volleys of gunfire, some slamming into the building, and set fire to a building across the road. About five of these people, including the consul, Mr James Batley, were remaining in Dili last night.

Late yesterday afternoon, Dili's electricity, telephone and water supplies were abruptly cut. A huge fireball could be seen about two kilometres from the United Nation's compound, believed to be the capital's Telcom building. The main Indonesian university and courthouse also were burnt to the ground.

UN officials believe the Indonesian military set alight the buildings which house all the capital's infrastructure.

The officials, who fear the death toll is in the hundreds, possibly thousands, scoffed when they heard Indonesia's President, Dr B.J. Habibie, had authorised the imposition of martial law in an attempt to end the violence. "Martial law will only give these killers more cover," one official said. "The whole thing would be a joke if it wasn't so tragic."

Entire suburbs of Dili have been cleared of people, some of them herded at gun-point on to trucks. UN officials have been told the Indonesian authorities plan to evacuate up to 200,000 people to Atambua, at the border with the Indonesian province of Nusa Tengarra Timur, claiming they want to flee. But Mr Martin confirmed many had been taken against their will.

Meanwhile, UN staff can only travel from the UN compound to Dili's airport where Australian RAAF Hercules are running shuttle evacuation flights. We have a reasonable chance of making it alive, with an Indonesian police escort along roads controlled by rampaging killers. It is small comfort that our protectors are the same police and soldiers who are commanding this cleansing of Dili.

But many East Timorese will not have even a reasonable chance if the UN evacuates completely.
 

News & issues

Anti-Australian protests hit major cities

Jakarta -- The rising wave of nationalistic fever brought on by a fervor of anti-American and Australian sentiment continued on Friday as major Indonesian cities became witnesses to flag burning demonstrations.

Here in Jakarta at least 500 people, mainly members of the People's Sovereignty and National Unity Struggle (Rver) and the Ansor Youth Movement, burned the Australian and American flags at the Australian Embassy and on Jl. Sudirman on Friday afternoon.

The group first burned the flags on Jl. Jend. Sudirman in South Jakarta. They then boarded two minivans and went to the Australian Embassy on Jl. Rasuna Said in South Jakarta.

Under the cautious eyes of hundreds of police officers, they laid the Australian and American flags on the busy asphalt road and put them in a cage which contained two chickens which then excreted on the flags. "This should teach Australians not to burn our flag," the demonstrators screamed.

This is the third straight day demonstrators have descended on the Australian Embassy. Like previous days, the protesters were disgruntled over Canberra's alleged intervention in Indonesia's domestic affairs over the East Timor issue, and also the burning of Indonesian flags by protesters in Australia. When police tried to intervene on Friday, the protesters pushed them away.

"They burned our flag in Australia. We burn theirs here," a protester said. One of the protesters leader, Zulkifli Tarigan, said that they were also unhappy with the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) over supposed irregularities in the August 30 ballot.

"If UNAMET does not investigate and disclose the case, killings in East Timor will continue," said Tarigan, after meeting with the Australian Embassy's third secretary, Jo Leong. Tarigan said the embassy official promised to convey the demands to the Australian government.

Meanwhile in Semarang, Central Java, a similar scene broke out as more than 100 university students staged a noisy protest in front of Australian Trade Representative office. They challenged Australia to prove its threat of sending troops to East Timor.

The students, who identified themselves as the National Student Movement, also burned the flags of Australia and the United Nations in front of the trade representative office.

They also deplored the UN which they described as the mastermind behind all disasters in East Timor. They decried the world body of failing to maintain neutrality during the ballot process.

The students warned Australia and other western countries not to interfere in Indonesia's internal affairs as East Timor was still part of Indonesia.

They also warned Australia not to behave like the champion of human rights since their own record was far from perfect in regard to the mistreatment of native Aborigines.

"If Australia tries to intervene or to invade East Timor, Australia will have to face the people," said Warseno, the leader of the protesters.

In Medan, North Sumatra, a dozen students also burned the Australian flag in front of the North Sumatra University on Jl. Dr. Mansur.

Student leader Rasum called Australia arrogant by sending its warships near Indonesian waters. "Australia is too snobbish," he cried to the enthusiastic protesting students.

Separately, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Trade cautiously reacted against the boycott threat launched by the Australian Council for Trade Unions (ACTU).

The ministry's director general for foreign trade, Djoko Moeljono, said the government would consult next with the National Importers Association (Ginsi) and the Indonesian Exporters Association (GPEI) before making any decisions. Ginsi has urged the government to boycott Australian products.

Djoko said not all parties in Australia agree to the boycott as it would only disrupt current close trade relations between the two countries.

Citing an example, he said the Australian airlines, Qantas, had warned Australian airport workers that the boycott is against the law. "We are still studying the ACTU's appeals," said Djoko, as quoted by Antara.

IMF suspends talks on economic program

Washington -- The International Monetary Fund has suspended discussions with Indonesia on its economic program, a fund spokesman said Friday.

"IMF management continues to keep under close review ongoing developments in Indonesia and discussions for the next program review are on hold," said the IMF spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

"Meanwhile, fund staff will continue to monitor economic developments seeking to preserve as much as possible all that has been achieved during more than one year of close cooperation," he said. The fund, whose loans are helping Indonesa.

Indonesia's future collapses into Timor ruins

Martin Woollacott -- When the Seaforth Highlanders set off for Jakarta docks in November, 1946, after months of coping with the Indonesian liberation movement on behalf of the absent Dutch, they passed contingents of troops just in from Holland. With one accord, the British soldiers raised clenched fists and shouted "Merdeka!" ("Freedom!"). Liberation salute and slogan were more than just a joke at Dutch expense. They were a recognition by men of what was still an imperial army that empire was not going to survive long in the Indies -- something which the young Dutchmen in the lorries going the other way did not yet understand.

It is an unhappy parallel with those times that the Indonesians are proving in some ways as obtuse as the Dutch in dealing today with the problems created by their own quasi- imperial style of government. While the Indonesians won their freedom from the Dutch, they did not win freedom from ideas that sustained Dutch power, notably that the most important instruments of rule were force and guile. Dutch power at an earlier stage had been based on an array of special agreements with local rulers. The result was a diverse, proto-federal polity. But, later, after the conquest of rebellious Aceh, the Dutch used their largely native troops to impose a uniform political pattern on the archipelago. They also continued to manipulate local politics by intrigue and by what today would be called covert action.

It is these traditions which the Indonesian armed forces inherited and exaggerated, which have caused much violence and suffering over the years in many parts of Indonesia, and which have now led to the tragic situation in East Timor. That situation is full of danger not only for the East Timorese but for Indonesians: if their elite continues to make the wrong decisions, the chance the country seemed to have only a few months ago of repudiating the mistakes of the past may be lost.

It is hard to understand East Timor unless it is grasped that the Indonesian military regarded it as a success and not as a failure.

After all, "roads, schools, and cathedrals" had been built, as one officer told a Guardian reporter. More important, a significant Indonesian constituency had been built up over the years since annexation in 1976. Some of the figures recently reported on the large number of East Timorese in regular army and national police units in the territory, as well as those in the civil service, illuminate the nature of the conflict there. This client community was used by men like General Zacky Anwar Makarim, the intelligence and covert action specialist who, incredibly, was given a senior command in East Timor during the period leading up to the referendum.

His brief, self-appointed or otherwise, can be guessed at: utilise these loyalists to produce a vote for autonomy or at least so narrow a vote for independence as to induce second thoughts. What we are now seeing in East Timor, apart from the murky manoeuvres of the military, are the desperate throes of this client class after the collapse of that strategy.

The independence leader Xanana Gusmao sees that reconciliation with this large group, perhaps a quarter of the population, fearful not only that it will lose its privileges but that it may be punished, harried, and expelled, is his central political problem. "They will be forgiven," he says, "and East Timor will also be theirs."

Men like Gusmao, it may be hazarded, understand not only that reconciliation is necessary in East Timor if it is to avoid being burdened by a permanently angry and alienated minority, but that a broader reconciliation with Indonesia is also vital. Formal independence is one thing. But there must also be a sense in which East Timor is recognised as a partly Indonesian society which needs to find some halfway house in its relationship with the great state that surrounds it. Such a reconciliation, of course, is hard to imagine now as East Timor burns.

In retrospect, the decision to hold an East Timor referendum was taken in an unforgivably light-hearted way. BJ Habibie, the interim president who succeeded Suharto, tossed it off in January, seemingly without considering whether he had the authority to persuade the armed forces to accept it.

The hard work which would have made it a real policy rather than a tragedy in the making was never done. Habibie did not prepare the way with the military, with his own party, or with the other parties. If the policy had been seriously weighed, it would have been immediately grasped that what was needed was not just a vote but a negotiation between East Timorese. The vote would inevitably be for independence, the negotiation should have been about guarantees for the pro-Indonesian element. It would also have been about Indonesia's own future influence in an independent East Timor, an influence based in part on that protected client class and in part on the gratitude of the independence movement for a clean break with the past.

Instead, some in the armed forces used the very assets that could have assured a trouble-free transition to ensure the exact opposite. It is not so much that the Habibie government is not in control of the military but rather that nobody in today's Indonesia is fully in control of anything. The old ruling party is split, the new parties are inexperienced and not in government and the officer corps is racked by its own internal politics.

This is hard to read, but senior figures can be presumed to be desperate not to be the ones who gave up East Timor. The only way to have avoided this situation, in which even the sensible men want to be on the sidelines, would have been to involve everybody in the decision to get out. The painful creation of such a consensus was beyond either Habibie or Wiranto, the armed forces chief, with the results we now see. Without it, the way was open for mischief of the worst kind.

To ask what is the policy now being pursued in East Timor is thus probably the wrong question. Is the policy to somehow retain the territory? Is it to accept its independence, but only after destroying its assets and dispersing its people, both as revenge and as a warning to other separatists? Is it partition? Is it to seek leverage in an independent state by entrenching the integration forces? The likelihood is that there is no one policy, however malign, but simply a chaos produced by the actions of the militias and the plots of some officers, compounded by the cowardice of decision makers, military and civilian. The Indonesian establishment has to grasp that its foolishness is profoundly damaging to Indonesia as well as East Timor. It is time to live up to the responsibilities that the word "Merdeka" implies.

A general squeeze and Habibie succumbs

The men in uniform usually get their own way, David Jenkins writes from Jakarta. Indonesia's military leaders are accustomed to getting their own way. And when it looked yesterday as if President Habibie might be tempted to give the green light to the early arrival of foreign peacekeepers in East Timor the generals decided enough was enough.

After a day-long meeting with his senior commanders, the defence minister, General Wiranto, called on Dr Habibie to make it clear that the army (TNI) would not accept that outcome under any circumstances.

The TNI, he said, was to remain the sole military force in East Timor until the People's Consultative Congress (MPR) met in October-November to consider the outcome of the August 30 referendum.

This was an unmistakable flexing of military muscles, an almost off-hand reminder that Dr Habibie has no power to rein in Indonesia's runaway army. The unstated message was: "If you care to oppose us on this, other scenarios may unfold."

The next day's headline in Kompas said all that needed to be said. "The Generals Meet Habibie. General Wiranto: 'It is not true there has been a coup d'etat'."

That was true enough. But in the opinion of one senior Indonesian source: "It was a quarter coup. There was a sort of confrontation last night between Wiranto and Habibie. Wiranto said, 'Don't let foreign peacekeepers come in.' It means the military have the upper hand." Asked if there was any implicit threat from Wiranto, the source said: "Well, actually not a threat. Just a squeeze!"

The confrontation between Dr Habibie and his generals came with the arrival in Jakarta of five UN ambassadors, who were thought to be pushing for the early arrival of an international peacekeeping force.

Indonesia's military commanders, who have never accepted what they see as Dr Habibie's rash decision to approve an independence referendum in East Timor, were concerned that the president might give way.

In their view, Dr Habibie takes more notice of his inner "kitchen Cabinet", a group of Muslim intellectuals who have long argued that there is no point in hanging on to this largely Catholic problem province, than he does of his Cabinet and his defence chiefs.

They aren't even sure that he should be listening to some members of Cabinet. The Information Minister, Lieutenant-General Mohammad Yunus, who served numerous tours in East Timor, is seen as altogether too liberal these days.

In these circumstances, there is no need for the military to think, at least for the time being, about pushing Dr Habibie off stage. The TNI is able to act as it pleases in places like East Timor and can afford to wait until the MPR chooses a new president in two months' time.

No-one believes any longer that Dr Habibie will remain in office after that. He is widely seen as a lame duck, crippled by the charge that he "gave away" East Timor.

At their meeting yesterday, sources in Jakarta say, Indonesia's leading generals, admirals and air marshals talked at length about the "threat" posed by foreign forces, including what one well-connected source called "the threat from the Australian armed forces".

In the next day's papers, the air force commander was even quoted as saying "We are ready to face any intruders from Australia". This may sound bizarre. But some Indonesian officers have no trouble these days locating possible threats.

"Australia keeps talking about sending troops," said Dr Salim Said, a political scientist who has close ties with a number of prominent generals.

"Australia is saying Indonesia is not able to take care of the situation. We see pictures of Australian panzer wagons in the morning newspapers and we read that they are ready to be sent to East Timor. "Unfortunately, the domestic pressure in Australia for something to be done in East Timor spills over to Jakarta and galvanises Indonesian nationalism. And that is felt very strongly in the armed forces."

According to a source in Jakarta, one prominent Indonesian general was saying last night: "We are ready to go to war with Australia if [they send troops without our permission]."

Indonesia's army may have some reason to believe that Dr Habibie and his advisers rushed into the East Timor referendum without proper consultation with key ministers. But the army's attempt to subvert that policy has been nothing short of disastrous. No wonder Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas is such an exhausted and demoralised man.

[The following note was posted by Joyo (accompanying a different article) on the Van Zorge Report web page on September 10, 1999 - James Balowski.]

Rumor has it that Prabowo, Suharto's "disgraced" son-in-law and former "golden boy" (about whom US Sec. of Defense Cohen made glowing remarks during a visit to Jakarta in Jan. 1998), has recently slipped back into the country after staying abroad in Jordan and elsewhere since August 1998.

Prior to becoming head of the dreaded Kopassus special forces, Prabowo cut his teeth so to speak as the mastermind behind the "black ninja" death squad terror campaign in East Timor. From 1985-98, every significant Jakarta operative in East Timor from the governor down to the village level has been a member of the Prabowo network.

It is believed by some well-informed sources that Prabowo and his operatives have used the East Timor situation to re-assert their power after coming out on the losing end of Prabowo's failed power grab in May 1998 -- when Kopassus gunned down students at Trisakti university and instigated massive devastation, mayhem, rapes of Chinese women, and killings as a smoke screen to seize power.

With Wiranto's so-called credibility on the line after the imposition of martial law, it is not Wiranto but Prabowo himself who can decide when the terror in Timor stops, and this is the bargaining chip Prabowo is using to re-assert his power in TNI. In other words, Prabowo has Wiranto by the balls and is using the unspeakable horrors in East Timor as his bargaining chip.

Prabowo, moreover, controls a war chest of hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, much of it coming from the business empires of his wife Titiek Suharto and his brother Hashim. Recently, it was revealed that US$250 million was missing from Cement Cibinong, the crown jewel in the Titiek-Hashim empire, which may have been used to bankroll Prabowo's black operations intended to undermine Wiranto and buy significant numbers DPR and MPR members to shore up Prabowo's political base.

It is also believed that the "black ninja" terror campaign in Java last year was the first stage in Prabowo's masterplan to reassert his power and undermine Wiranto. In order to turn off that campaign, it is alleged that Wiranto made certain concessions such as not pressing to court martial Prabowo or his operatives for the Trisakti killings and abductions and torture of government critics -- and not to purge members of Prabowo's extensive network from the ranks of TNI and its intelligence apparatus.

US priority is to maintain good ties

Elizabeth Becker and Philip Shenon, Washington -- The United States is resisting direct threats of economic or military sanctions against Indonesia over the chaos in East Timor in hopes of preserving its relationship with that vast archipelago nation, even as the Clinton administration protests the chaos that has left hundreds of Timorese dead, senior officials said.

The administration, these officials said, has made the calculation that the United States must put its relationship with Indonesia, a mineral-rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny, impoverished territory of 800,000 people that is seeking independence.

The Defense Department is taking the lead in dealing with the crisis. Hoping to make use of longstanding ties between the Pentagon and the Indonesian military -- a relationship that dates back to the early days of the Cold War, when Indonesia was seen as a bulwark against communism -- the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton, has telephoned Indonesia's military commander, Gen. Wiranto, several times this week to discuss East Timor.

Officials say the two military leaders have discussed details of Wiranto's plan to remove troops from East Timor who have allied themselves with anti-independence militias and replace them with soldiers clearly loyal to the central government in Jakarta.

The Indonesian military leader is respected by Pentagon officials for his military professionalism and is seen as the key figure in the crisis, overshadowing President B.J. Habibie, who appears to have little control over the situation and is distrusted by many in the military.

"It is not unreasonable to give him at least 24 hours to get folks there, and then you've got to give him a little time to bring them under control," said a senior administration official. "Wiranto knows that everybody expects to see real traction on this very fast -- and very fast doesn't mean weeks."

While senior administration officials did not rule out the use of sanctions, they acknowledged that the United States had no firm plans to punish the Jakarta government if the violence continued. The administration, they said, is willing to support an Australian-led UN peacekeeping force in East Timor, but only if it is invited by the Indonesian government.

"Because we bombed in Kosovo doesn't mean we should bomb Dili," said Samuel Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, referring to the Timorese capital.

"Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world," he said. "It is undergoing a fragile but tremendously important political and economic transformation, which the United States strongly supports. The resolution of this crisis matters not just for East Timor but for Indonesia as a whole."

He suggested that US threats of a cutoff of economic or military aid to Indonesia were not necessary. "It's not a question of making threats," he said. "It's a question of stating what is simply a practical fact of life, which is that it would be very hard for the international community to continue to be of economic assistance if there is a chaotic situation in Timor."

The United States has little direct leverage over the Indonesian military. As a result of human rights abuses attributed to the military, Congress has sharply limited military aid and training to Indonesia, and the total military aid package this year totaled only $476,000. "It's not as if we have a military assistance program that could be cut off," said State Department spokesman James Rubin.

The United States has a more potent means of punishing Indonesia through what amounts to its veto power in the International Monetary Fund, which has committed tens of billions of dollars in emergency financial support to Indonesia as a result of the Asian economic crisis.

But Washington has been reluctant to threaten a cutoff of the aid for fear that the result would be a new economic collapse in Indonesia, further undermining its transition to democracy after three decades of authoritarian rule under President Suharto, who was forced from office last year. It could also harm US corporations that have large investments in Indonesia.

The Clinton administration has focused its attention on persuading Wiranto that he must step in personally to insure that his troops stop the violence.

US officials said they are convinced that Wiranto is not directing the violence in East Timor, but they said he has made few efforts to reign in junior military commanders who may be encouraging the violence as a means of blocking independence for the territory.

The United States is trying to convince Wiranto that with order restored, a UN peacekeeping force could be deployed to East Timor and relieve him of the responsibility of controlling the militias until there is a final decision on East Timor's political future.

In a referendum last week that ignited the violence, an overwhelming majority of Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia, which invaded and annexed the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

A senior Pentagon official said Wednesday that the commander of US military forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis Blair, arrived in Jakarta on Wednesday to carry the message to Wiranto "that he has the responsibility to bring this under control and he had better belly up to that responsibility."

Administration officials are also concerned that the crisis in East Timor could disrupt the difficult relationship between the Indonesian military and its civilian leaders, and could bring down Habibie, who has been praised by the United States for pushing ahead with democratic reforms.

Administration officials said that if the United Nations sponsors an armed peacekeeping mission in East Timor, it will almost certainly receive military support from the United States, although not ground troops.

"The United States is not planning an insertion of any peacekeeping troops," said Defense Secretary William Cohen. He called upon the Indonesian government to act "swiftly and effectively" to stop the militias. "The government of Indonesia is responsible for bringing order and peace to East Timor," he said. At a White House news conference, Berger said that any peacekeeping force would be "overwhelmingly Asian in character."

"We have to recognize that Indonesia is in Asia, and that the Indonesians will respond much better to a solution here that is dominated by the Asians and not dominated by the United States." he said.

The government of Australia has volunteered to lead an international peacekeeping force and provide 2,000 troops, but has said that it will not go in alone.

US officials say they have been in close contact with the Australian government and that if the United States participated in the mission, it would be likely provide communications, logistics and intelligence support.

"We will look at what is the appropriate level of assistance we can give, whether it be logistical or technical support or other," said White House press secretary Joe Lockhart. "But I can tell you that there's been no decision made on that."

Habibie feels the heat

John McBeth and Margot Cohen, Jakarta -- On a late-August evening, senior officials of Golkar, Indonesia's ruling party, filed out into the dark after a five-hour conclave at the home of President B.J. Habibie. The official word was that the beleaguered and embattled party now stood united. In truth, its members were deeply split.

The discussions were punctuated, according to people present, by rancorous exchanges over an issue that now fixates Indonesian -- money politics. At one point, according to party Vice-Chairman Marzuki Darusman, President Habibie flew into a rage in response to warnings from Marzuki that his election bid was doomed if people close to him were seen as buying the presidency.

"He said I should disqualify myself if I even thought we could lose the election," recalls Marzuki, who opposed Habibie's selection as the party candidate earlier this year. "He was in such a fit of rage I had no reason to respond; everyone was just looking at him."

The incident, confirmed by senior party official Eki Syachrudin, shows how deep are the divisions within Golkar as it approaches the event that will determine its future role after three decades in power during the Suharto era. Those splits are now being widened by the Bank Bali scandal, which involved the transfer of 546 billion rupiah ($70 million) in public funds to a company controlled by Golkar's deputy treasurer, Setya Novanto. Although the evidence remains sketchy, many Indonesians believe a sizable chunk went to a war chest held by backers of Habibie's election bid. The aim of these supporters, many fear, is to buy up votes when the members of Indonesia's People's Consultative Assembly meet to elect the president in two months' time. Marzuki himself believes as much as 200 billion rupiah went into the Habibie war chest. Local media reports say it now contains more than 1.3 trillion rupiah.

The identity of the president's backers is almost as controversial. They are known as Tim Sukses ("Team Success"), an informal group of political allies and Habibie family members whose activities on the president's behalf have become a topic of national speculation. A recent opinion poll in Tempo magazine showed that half the respondents believed Tim Sukses was responsible for the Bank Bali case. In an indicator of the damage the bank scandal could do to both Habibie and Golkar, another poll in the magazine showed that just 9% viewed Habibie as a "fit and proper" person to serve as president. Before the scandal broke on July 20, the figure had been 39%.

For Marzuki, the question of whether the Bank Bali money made its way to Tim Sukses is "the whole issue now," and could determine whether the party is prepared to unite behind Habibie when it holds its final leadership meeting on October 20. Other Golkar opponents of his bid to keep the presidency have already made up their minds. "By staying there, Habibie will only distort the reform process and jeopardize the fabric of the nation," says former Golkar Secretary-General Sarwono Kusumaadmadja, pointing to the twin problems of corruption and fraying national unity -- the crises in Aceh in East Timor.

Habibie's supporters, however, remain determined. They argue that the general election that took place in June and the presidential election due on November 10 are two different processes. One was decided by the masses while the other will be settled by the new national assembly composed of the 500 members of the House of Representatives elected in June and a number of appointed members. The fact that voters backed opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri in the June election doesn't mean the assembly must follow suit, the president's supporters say.

Could Habibie's supporters buy the presidency despite the opposition's triumph in the general election? "I think so," says Rachmat Witoelar, another former Golkar secretary-general. "There's a widespread belief it can be done because the appointed members of the assembly are vulnerable people."

Little is known for sure about the low-profile Tim Sukses, mentions of which first began appearing in Indonesian media about five months ago. It's believed to be built around a close-knit core of associates from Sulawesi, Habibie's birthplace. "The major players might not be saying that it exists," says James Van Zorge, a political analyst and publisher of the Van Zorge Report, a twice-weekly publication on Indonesian politics, "but no one is denying it either. Of course it exists."

Eki, the senior Golkar official who confirmed Marzuki's account of the August meeting, and who led the party's election committee in the June poll, also confirms the group's existence. He says it was formed about six months ago after Habibie narrowly got his nomination accepted in the plenary session held to choose Golkar's presidential candidate. "Habibie was not sure he had the trust of Golkar," says Eki, "so he created his own team."

Eki says the group includes Habibie's two brothers, Effendy ("Fanny") and Suyatim ("Timmy"); State Advisory Council Chairman Arnold Baramuli, who is also a member of Golkar's board of advisers; and Hariman Siregar, a former student activist who was jailed for his role in 1974 riots in Jakarta. Media reports and another party source say other members include Setya, the Golkar deputy treasurer whose company received the Bank Bali cash, and State Enterprise Minister Tanri Abeng. Tanri has been tagged by local media as one of Habibie's main fundraisers -- a description he rejected in a faxed response to the Review.

Another Tim Sukses member, according to a party source, is Nurdin Halid, former head of a clove monopoly run by Tommy Suharto, a son of former President Suharto. Nurdin said in a recent media interview that Tim Sukses has been campaigning throughout the country's 27 provinces. He said part of its strategy was to target opposition-party officials in remote provinces in a bid to secure votes among the 135 assembly members nominated by regional parties.

But Tim Sukses may be prepared to do more than just campaign. One of its key figures, asked by the Review in early June if he thought the assembly could be bought, responded: "Pastilah [Certainly]." This man, who insisted on anonymity, also said the parliamentary elections shouldn't be taken seriously. "For me, this election is only an International Monetary Fund package. They need a legitimate government to protect their money."

Marzuki has no doubts that Tim Sukses is prepared to buy votes: "Their job is to secure the numbers," he says. "I have no doubt money politics is involved and that people around Habibie are using money politics to win his presidency. There's a general sense and belief these are real happenings. It's not easy to corroborate in terms of real evidence, but transactions are happening, there is no doubt."

Elements of the military are also worried. Lt.-Gen. Agum Gumelar, governor of the National Defence Institute, told a closed-door gathering in Singapore in early August that anyone who uses money to win the presidency "won't last long," according to someone who was present. Speaking to officers attending summer school at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies, Agum said the army is only obliged to support a president who comes to power through "just and fair means."

The old-style politics of Tim Sukses also faces resistance from Indonesia's middle classes, chastened by cronyism's contribution to the Asian Crisis.

Sarwono, a former senior figure in Golkar, believes an amalgam of honest bureaucrats, journalists, lawyers and others disgusted by corruption are in the vanguard of opposition. "There is this white-collar conspiracy with state funds being embezzled and diverted for personal or political purposes, and what we're seeing is a white-collar network fighting it," Sarwono says. Political sources say Indonesian Corruption Watch, a private watchdog, has recorded 40 corruption cases involving figures in the Habibie administration. For Habibie the risk is that the perceptions of wrongdoing surrounding Tim Sukses will lose him the support of even more members of Golkar and deepen its divisions. Even presidential adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar lamely admitted recently that "the president can't do much, even when he is so clean and honest, because so many people around him aren't clean."

Timor crisis drags down Rupiah, stocks

Jakarta -- The rupiah breached on Monday the 8,000 level against the US dollar as international pressure increased over Indonesia's handling of the East Timor issue.

Currency dealers said investors dumped their Indonesian currency over concerns that the growing pressure would prompt donors to suspend loans to Indonesia.

The rupiah lost nearly 2.5 percent to end the day at Rp 8,010 against the American dollar -- its lowest level since early June -- from 7,815 at the close of Friday trading.

The East Timor issue also dragged down share prices, with the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) Composite Index falling almost 4.5 percent to close at 549.42 in thin trading.

Major countries and international institutions warned Indonesia on Monday to ensure stability in the violence-wracked province.

The International Monetary Fund, which is leading a US$43 billion economic bailout for Indonesia, issued on Monday a veiled threat, saying the Indonesian government had "every interest in seeing the process in East Timor unfold smoothly and without violence, in accordance with internationally recognized norms".

Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Sjahril Sabirin also acknowledged that the weakening of the rupiah against the US dollar was directly related to the situation in East Timor.

He acknowledged that the central bank had intervened in the market to prevent the market rate from moving unrealistically out of proportion due to the political instability. He said BI sold $5 million on the day to arrest a further drop in the Indonesian currency.

Sabirin said the current ideal level for the rupiah exchange rate against the greenback was between Rp 6,000 and Rp 7,000 per dollar.

Mirroring the rupiah, stock prices on the Jakarta Stock Exchange fell 24.76 points, or 4.38 percent, to close at 540.42 in thin trading with a total value of only about Rp 300 billion.

Vonny Juwono, a broker at PT Trimegah Securindolestari, said that foreign investors, the main market players in the local stock market, mostly sold their blue chip stocks.

She said the instability in East Timor was affecting the market. "There is certainly the East Timor factor, which led to the drop in share prices."

Vonny said trading on the JSX in coming days would continue to remain thin and bearish. She said that the trading value was below Rp 400 billion.

Vonny said the East Timor issue had overshadowed the potential market effects of the companies' good results in the first half in financial reports recently released to the public.

At the close of trading, shares of state-owned telecommunication companies were down. PT Telkom lost 6.2 percent, or Rp 175 to Rp 2,650, and PT Indosat fell 1.7 percent, or Rp 200 to Rp 2,650.

Cigarette manufacturer PT Gudang Garam lost 9.1 percent, or Rp 1,700 to Rp 17,000, and its competitor HM Sampoerna fell by 4.2 percent, or Rp 650 to Rp 15,000.

The most actively traded Bank Lippo shares fell 13 percent, or Rp 25 to Rp 175.
 

Arms/Armed forces

Military exercises called off

Peter Cole-Adams and Mark Metherell -- The Federal Government yesterday cancelled three joint Australia-Indonesia training exercises and announced a review of all aspects of the defence relationship.

Only hours before the announcement, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, had dismissed the defence links between the two countries, on which Australia had planned to spend nearly $8 million this year, as "neither here nor there".

Mr Howard, the Defence Minister, Mr Moore, and the Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Barrie, all rejected calls for a complete break in defence ties. They said it was critically important to retain the links that had made it possible for Australia to evacuate United Nations staff from Dili and support those still in the UN compound.

Mr Howard also announced an initial $3 million in humanitarian aid through UN agencies for East Timorese victims of the killing and violence of recent days. It would be used to buy, stockpile and transport blankets, plastic sheeting, health and kitchen kits and other emergency supplies.

He said Australia was ready to provide more aid as soon as the security position improved and there was a clearer picture of what was needed.

But Mr Howard described calls to withdraw Australian recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor as "empty" and "futile".

"It's a bit late for that," he said, because, according to the May 5 agreement signed by Indonesia, East Timor would soon be independent. On economic ties, Mr Howard said these were "on the table", but ruled out a trade boycott. The Treasurer, Mr Costello, when asked if the $1 billion Australia had pledged to Indonesia would be withheld, said: "Well I can't see that we will be [doing that] in the current situation. No."

Labor's spokesmen on foreign affairs and defence, Mr Brereton and Mr Martin, said the part-cancellation of defence exercises and the review of other aspects of the defence relationship fell hopelessly short of what was needed to send an unambiguous message to Jakarta. They demanded full suspension of bilateral defence ties.

Mr Brereton said continued recognition of Indonesian sovereignty was unsustainable and warned the assumption that Indonesia would honour its undertaking to let Timor become independent showed "tragic naivety".

Admiral Barrie listed three joint training programs to be cancelled: a paratroop exercise planned for Brisbane in November, an instructor-training mission to Indonesia by junior officers this month, and a planned capability development seminar. But this was not the full list, he said. A "fair slice" of the $7.8 million defence co-operation program would now be under review.

A leading defence analyst, Dr Des Ball, said the events in East Timor had shown Australia's defence strategy with Indonesia to have been "a massive policy failure" in its bid to influence the Jakarta military chiefs.
 

International solidarity

Thousands take to the streets over Timor

Ordinary Australians took to the streets in their thousands today demanding urgent government action over the slaughter in East Timor.

Protesters stormed Prime Minister John Howard's Sydney office, blockaded airline terminals and maintained vigils as nation-wide anger continued to mount over the genocide in the violence- wracked region.

The anti-Indonesia demonstrations called on the Australian government to withdraw recognition of Indonesia's sovereignity of East Timor and to immediately send in armed peacekeeping forces.

About 20,000 protesters took over Sydney streets to broadcast their condemnation of Australia's refusal to act on peacekeeping forces without Indonesian permission and a UN mandate.

"Make the Australian government do what the Australian people want -- send troops in," these protesters chanted. Wielding banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Howard You Coward" and "East Timor -- Blood on Howard's hands" a breakaway group of protesters battered their way into the building containing Prime Minister John Howard's office.

To screams of "UN in, Indonesia out" the group of about 30 protesters rammed their way into the building, buckling the front door and occupying the lifts for a short time.

The break-in was a mere 15 minute episode during a five hour rally which featured demands for the federal government to cut all ties with Indonesia. It followed a CFMEU push for a national consumer boycott of Indonesian products and services.

Spokesman Andrew Ferguson also threatened Australian retailers they would be picketed if they did not take Indonesian goods off their shelves.

Meanwhile, dozens of building workers and East Timorese blocked Garuda's passenger check-in area at Melbourne Airport today, preventing many passengers from boarding a flight to Bali.

Channel Ten said the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), checked boarding passes at the departure gates, preventing those Bali-bound passenger from going through and cheering through those off to other destinations.

The flight took off, but many angry passengers were not aboard. Union spokesman Martin Kingham said: "We had a payload of 170 and of those 170 only four got on the plane".

And about 30 people maintained the continuing vigil outside the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne's inner city Queens Road, following today's 150-strong free Timor rally.

In Brisbane, unionists, children and nuns were among well over 1,000 protesters who packed City Hall for a rally in support of East Timor.

Jose Teixiera, a spokesman for the Brisbane-based Timorese community group East Timor National Resistance Council, said one way of showing Indonesia how Australians felt about the atrocities in the troubled province was to call for the boycott of Indonesia at next year's Sydney Olympics.

He said that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) should be asked to examine whether it was "proper" for Indonesian athletes to compete against those from countries seeking Indonesia's withdrawal from East Timor.

And in Adelaide more than 500 people marched to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's office, the Indonesian consulate and Parliament House, where a vigil began yesterday.

Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor group activist Emma Webb said the vigil would continue for as long as it took for peace to return to East Timor. Meanwhile, federal parliament is expected to consider a motion to recognise the sovereignty of East Timor.

Democrats senator Vicky Bourne told a Sydney protest she would ask Independent Peter Andren to put forward the motion at the next sitting of parliament.

Australia is at the forefront of international calls for a multinational peacekeeping force for East Timor and has offered to send up to 4,500 troops, but Mr Howard refuses to act without Indonesian permission and a UN mandate.

The tide of protest swells

In another day of nationwide demonstrations more than 25,000 protesters packed the centre of Melbourne yesterday to hear East Timor independence leader Xanana Gusmao appeal to his Australian "brothers and sisters" to pressure the Howard Government to send peace enforcers into East Timor.

"I thank our friends, the people of Australia, my brothers and sisters, Australian workers and Australian students. Please help us, please help me to save my people," Mr Gusmao said.

East Timorese guerilla leader and Falintil chief of staff Taur Matan Ruak earlier spoke to the rally by satellite phone and appealed for a food airlift from Australia directly into the hills of Timor to aid starving refugees.

Postal, tele-communications and freight bans were imposed on Indonesian embassies by Victorian unions yesterday, while union pickets at Melbourne airport continued to severely disrupt the plans of holiday-makers flying to Indonesia.

About 60 unionists blockaded check-in counters for the 8.55am flight to Bali, leading to two arrests.

In Sydney, scuffles broke out as more than 500 protesters blockaded Garuda's check-in counters at 8am and then tried to blockade the departure gate.

Elsewhere in Sydney, almost 1000 high school and university students stopped lunchtime traffic as they marched through the CBD before joining East Timorese for a sit-in at the Garuda office.

In Canberra, Parliament House faced another embarrassing security breach yesterday when East Timorese activists dodged patrolling guards and spray-painted "shame Australia shame" over the building's entrance.

Four men perched dangerously over the entrance on a glass roof and held police at bay for about an hour.

One of the four protesters arrested after the incident, Gareth Smith, who worked as part of the UN mission, later told Canberra Magistrates Court he had faced a "crisis of conscience", with many of his East Timorese friends being jailed or killed.

Elsewhere in Canberra, people tooting their horns in support of protesters outside the Indonesian embassy were yesterday hit with $90 fines by Australian Federal Police.

Meanwhile, travel retailer Flight Centre has become the first tourism operator to react to the Indonesian tragedy, threatening to pull the plug on millions of dollars of business to Bali.

Flight Centre -- which sends around 100,000 travellers to Indonesia each year -- has written to Indonesian embassies around the world warning that it will encourage its clients to holiday elsewhere, chief executive officer, Graham Turner, said yesterday.

"We will also be advising people not to fly with Garuda, the [Indonesian] national carrier," Mr Turner said. Flight Centre's business to Indonesia amounts to between $130 million and $150 million a year, or 10 percent of their business out of Australia.

Solicitors in NSW are being encouraged to volunteer to help prepare evidence briefs and prosecution cases arising from alleged human rights atrocities in East Timor.

The chairman of the society's Human Rights Taskforce, Michael Antrum, said solicitors would perform a range of duties, including viewing atrocity sites, taking statements and researching where laws had been breached and human rights abuses had occurred.