East Timor

A new nation builds a new kind of army

Sydney Morning Herald - April 20, 2002

Hamish McDonald -- Dressed in dun-brown overalls and boots, Fitar dos Reis, Gil Nelson Belo and Gulio Freitas line up under the baking afternoon sun to take their place on a mat and practise loading an M-9 machine-gun.

They fit the ammunition belt, cock the firing mechanism, and ease the safety catch as Staff Sergeant Al Peart of the New Zealand Army barks orders in rough Portuguese.

One mistake in the sequence and the recruit does an immediate five push-ups, but these sweating 19- and 20-year-olds say they do not mind. "We want to work at it for our country," Mr Freitas says. "We will accept anything that is handed out," Mr dos Reis adds.

This is the boot camp for East Timor's new regular army, a series of corrugated steel barracks and offices amid red-brown eucalypt-studded hills 20 kilometres east of the capital, Dili.

It is named after Nicolau Lobato, East Timor's first leader of the legendary Falintil guerilla resistance, who was killed in 1978 by the Indonesian invaders. But in this Australian-built training centre the new nation's fighting men say they want a distinct break with the past, and seek to turn out a well-trained regular army that will stay out of politics.

"Falintil stands for the 'Force for the Liberation of Timor Lorosae', so its mission was just that during the time when the Indonesians were here," said the camp's commander, Lieutenant- Colonel Sabika Besse.

The commander was one of the defenders of the western border post of Balibo against the first Indonesian covert attack in October 1975, when five Australian-based television newsmen were killed, and fought on around Viqueque for the rest of the 24-year occupation.

"So as far as I am concerned, on August 30, 1999, [the date of a United Nations-supervised vote in favour of independence] our country achieved liberty," Colonel Sabika said.

"Hence we have changed our name from Falintil to the FDTL [East Timor Defence Force, in Portuguese]. It has a different mission from that of Falintil. It is a defence force, to deter or defeat aggressors."

On the advice of a team from King's College in London, East Timor is setting up a regular army of two light infantry battalions, numbering 1,500 troops overall, with a further 1,500 reservists.

The first battalion underwent its basic training last year, and since January has been stationed in the eastern Los Palos region, where it is taking over security duties as United Nations peacekeepers are withdrawn.

This battalion was largely drawn from younger members of Falintil who passed demanding physical and aptitude tests. The second battalion now being trained at Metinaro are raw recruits straight from high school, with the 267 trainee soldiers (32 of them women) picked from 7000 applicants drawn by prestige and the prospect of the $A163-a-month salary for privates.

The recruits do their very basic training in drill, weapons handling and small-unit tactics under Portuguese officers such as Lieutenant Hugo Fernandes, who this afternoon was watching a group learn about reconnaissance under a shady tree at the back of the camp.

A score of Australian and New Zealand officers help manage the camp and impart specialist skills in armoury, machine-guns and communications as well as the English language, while four South Korean officers teach tae kwon do.

The new force's officers are Falintil veterans like Captain Higino dos Neves, 34, who started helping the guerillas as a messenger and carrier aged eight and carries 22 bits of bullet and shrapnel in his body, or Euphrasia da Silva Pinto Mimenes, who watches over the female recruits.

Only 112 fighters from the original phase of resistance in 1975- 83 were still in the field with Falintil when the Indonesians left at the end of 1999, and only 20 of these, such as Colonel Sabika, have transferred into the new defence force.

The new army is being trained in conventional Western fashion. However, its chief, Brigadier-General Taur Matan Ruak, who was the last Falintil commander in succession to the new president- elect, Xanana Gusmao, has organised for platoons to be broken into six-soldier squads. This was the unit found most effective during the resistance years but is about half the size of the smallest patrol for which a European army has tactics.

When fully operational, the defence force will cost the new government about $13.5million a year, which allows fuel for light vehicles and two patrol boats donated by Portugal, but no money for items such as helicopters or armoured troop carriers.

Is the force worth the money, for a government whose total budget will be about $220million a year and whose independence leaders at one time thought of a country, like Costa Rica, without a military at all?

Professor Desmond Ball, of the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, is not worried about the calibre of the defence force. "Why they have a regular force of 1500 is because this was the minimum acceptable to Falintil in the wake of September-October 1999," Professor Ball said, referring to the rampage by Indonesian-backed militias after the independence vote.

"It's hard to think of any real military contingencies that East Timor's going to face. They're going to be border ones, they're going to be offshore resources, policing of its maritime zone, those sorts of things. And if there is a real military contingency, a regular force of 1500 is not going to make any difference. They're going to have go back to a guerilla operation, which they are good at.

"So a regular military operation doesn't make much sense to me, particularly if they are diverting resources from what are going to be the real issues, which are building up the infrastructure, the police and law enforcement, the judiciary and the education system. I think we've got our priorities skewed."

Professor Ball said that out of $3.9billion Canberra has spent on or committed to East Timor between September 1999 and June 2004, less than 10per cent was devoted to non-military purposes. Defence had the money, while other agencies such as the Federal Police, who saw "big problems" looming in East Timor, had very little.

"In Canberra you've got a defence budget of $11billion, so they can go off and do their job very happily, and you've agencies like AusAID [the civil overseas aid agency] or the police struggling with the crumbs that have fallen off the table."

At Metinaro, Colonel Sabika is adamant the new force can play an effective role in defence and will not become a burden to East Timor.

"We obviously wouldn't be able to blockade aggressors at the border or defeat them at the border, but we would hope to retard their progress, until hopefully - and we have faith in the United Nations and our neighbour countries - that they would then be able to come and help us," he said.

"The force is of the people, for the people, and when there is no military task to do we are not just going to have the soldiers living in barracks. If there are roads to build or if they need help with reconstruction, then of course the force could be involved with that.

"We will guard against this attitude of eat-sleep, eat-sleep. In the jungle we would say that about the Indonesian forces. We will also look at having our own gardens, to grow food, so that we can at least somewhat sustain ourselves, and reduce the burden on the budget."

President to attend East Timor party

The Associated Press - April 20, 2002

Jakarta -- Indonesia's president will attend next month's independence celebration in the country's former territory East Timor, a palace spokesman said Saturday.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri will be among at least 15 heads of state attending the May 20 celebration for the world's newest nation. They include the president and prime minister of Portugal, which ended its colonial rule of East Timor in 1975.

Megawati will attend the midnight festivities but not stay overnight in Dili, the East Timor capital, said her spokesman, Garibaldi Sudjatmiko. East Timor President-elect Xanana Gusmao also will be inaugurated that day.

Indonesia took control of the half-island territory after the end of Portuguese rule. When the East Timorese voted for independence in 1999, elements of the Indonesian military mounted a campaign of killing, looting and burning that killed hundreds of people and forced 250,000 to flee their homes.

International peacekeepers intervened to halt the violence, and East Timor has been under UN rule since 1999.

Indonesian ties with East Timor have since improved significantly. Tensions eased during the administration of Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia's first democratically elected president after three decades of military rule.

Megawati already has met East Timorese leaders several times in Jakarta. Her visit to East Timor has been opposed by some lawmakers, who say there are numerous unresolved issues between the two nations. Megawati also is scheduled to visit neighboring West Timor.

East Timor - An economy in free-fall

Australian Financial Review - April 20, 2002

Tim Dodd, Dili -- With independence only a month off, how bad is the economic problem facing East Timor?

Here's an indicator. Even after two years of heavy spending by cash-rich UN workers and aid staff in Dili's hotels, restaurants and retail stores, this year East Timor's real GDP will still be less than it was in 1998, the year Indonesia's campaign of destruction caused the economy to collapse by 34 per cent.

And in the rural areas where three-quarters of East Timorese live, people are still worse off because they did not gain the benefit of the service industry revival in the capital.

In the past two years, East Timor's Dili-driven economic growth was spectacular, up 15 per cent in 2000 and 18 per cent in 2001 in real terms. But now, with independence, the numbers of highly paid international workers are on their way out, leaving East Timor with a difficult economic outlook.

This year, the International Monetary Fund projects that East Timor's real economic growth will be zero. "It's a tough year ahead," says one foreign official in Dili who has closely observed East Timor's progress towards statehood since the independence referendum in 1999.

Not only is the flow of cash from free-spending aid workers drying up. The original pledges of aid from other countries and multi-lateral organisations, worth more than $1 billion, are running out and now East Timor is competing with urgent calls for assistance from new world trouble spots like Afghanistan and Argentina for access to the international aid pot.

East Timor's problem is that there is a two- to three-year gap which has to be bridged in the Government's budgeting between the end of current assistance programs and the beginning of significant revenue from the Timor Gap gas projects. So far, East Timor's aid has been solely through grants and it will begin life as an independent nation debt-free.

The Government, led by Chief Minister Mari Alkatiri, says it wants to avoid receiving loans. But international donors, including Australia, who will gather in Dili for meetings just before the May 20 independence day, may not see it that way. Although there is willingness to offer more grants, they may not cover the full budget gap that is emerging, forcing the new country to accept loans, albeit at concessional rates.

The exodus of foreign workers is also leaving a skills gap. Half of the senior jobs in the Government are still unfilled and the UN is to bear the cost of 100 foreign managers who will remain after independence. It is asking other donors to fund 200 more.

But many East Timorese would rather be without them. Ten locals could be employed for the cost of one foreigner, complains Soraya Beatrix Soares, a university-educated East Timorese who returned from Java with her architect husband to join the new country. Her husband is working on a school building project funded by the World Bank.

She says she realises that East Timorese don't have all the skills but believes locals could have done more in the reconstruction projects under supervision and thus acquired more expertise.

East Timor cannot erase Jakarta's influence

Australian Financial review - April 20, 2002

Tim Dodd, Dili -- In Dili's old commercial heart is an Javanese bakso (meatball soup) restaurant that does a thriving trade at $US1 a bowl, proving the East Timorese have not lost their taste for the food of the oppressors.

They pack the small establishment, which is next door to a burnt-out building -- a testimony to the city's destruction at the hands of the Indonesians 2 years ago.

Dili has many other reminders of Jakarta's 24-year rule, including an abundance of Indonesian signs. One, on the main road from the airport, urges the populace to heed the "eight functions of the family", a leftover from the Soeharto regime which, like autocratic governments everywhere, took a didactic approach to social control.

Nor can the Indonesian influence on culture be easily erased, even among a people who chose independence by a margin of nearly 4 to 1. Dungdut, Indonesia's most popular musical style, blares everywhere in East Timor. "This is the music I like," says John, a Dili taxi driver, turning up the volume as the repetitive rhythms, derived from Indian music, fill the radio.

These seeming contradictions are woven through the complex relationship between Indonesia and its former vassal, which becomes an independent nation exactly one month from today.

Indonesia's senior envoy here, Kristio Wahyono, voices the official line, saying: "Our foreign policy towards East Timor is to be good neighbours and forward looking."

But Mr Kristio still does not know whether President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was invited months ago, will come to the independence celebrations. East Timor's leaders have said it is vital she comes, to set the tone for future relations, and the Indonesian envoy agrees. "From my point of view she should come," he says. But he notes that she has to take into account the "strong opposition from the [Indonesian] military and the Parliament" to a trip to Dili.

Mr Kristio sees the same division of opinion on the East Timorese side. "We see [president-elect] Xanana as a friend of Indonesia," he says. But he believes that Fretilin, the majority party in the Parliament, is anti-Jakarta: "They are opposed to Indonesia and are still hostile towards Indonesia."

However, the two countries will not able to look past each other. For Indonesia there are some commercial benefits -- not large ones but enough to help sustain a good relationship.

The Indonesian state-owned oil company, Pertamina, is operating very successfully in East Timor, with a 68 per cent share of the fuel market. Indonesia is also the best access corridor to East Timor from nearly everywhere except Australia.

East Timor defendants now blame Habibie

Jakarta Post - April 19, 2002

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta -- Defendants in alleged crimes against humanity in East Timor blamed on Thursday the policy of then president B.J. Habibie as the origin of all the troubles that occurred during East Timor's struggle for independence from Indonesia in 1999.

The defense team representing former East Timor governor Abilio Soares asked the panel of judges twice to bring Habibie into the courtroom to testify in regard to his decision to offer East Timor a self determination vote, blaming that as the trigger for the violence that ensued.

"Knowing that the option offered by president Habibie caused the violence in East Timor, we need your honor's approval to order the former president to appear in court to testify," lawyer Indriyanto Seno Adji said. Presiding Judge Marni Emmy Mustafa did not respond to the request and adjourned the hearing until next Wednesday.

Both witnesses in Abilio's hearing, former Aileu regent Suprapto Tarman and former chief of the East Timor military command Brig. Gen. Tono Suratman testified that the situation under their authority was calm until the announcement of the "second option" by Habibie in January 1999. The second option was the vote to choose to accept or reject a wide-ranging autonomy under Jakarta rule.

Former East Timor Police chief Brig,. Gen. Timbul Silaen appeared in another hearing on Thursday. The session, presided over by Judge Andi Samsan Nganro, heard testimonies by two of Silaen's former subordinates when he was in command of the East Timor provincial Police.

Soares and Timbul are being charged with failure to stop their subordinates from committing rights abuses and turning the perpetrators in. Silaen will testify in Abilio's hearing next Wednesday.

East Timor president faces first challenge: parliament

Christian Science Monitor - April 19, 2002

Dan Murphy, Dili -- Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao is a figure of such legendary stature here that no viable challenger ran against him for the presidency of the world's newest nation.

Mr. Gusmao, who prefers his nom de guerre, Xanana, took 83 percent of the vote Wednesday. His opponent, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, ran to save East Timor the embarrassment of an unopposed election.

But the struggle for the dashing former guerrilla leader, who spent 15 years in the jungle fighting the Indonesian occupation of the former Portuguese colony, and another seven in a Jakarta prison, has only just begun.

He will lead a tiny, politically immature Pacific island nation that is subject to droughts and only has one native doctor among its 700,000 citizens. It is an overwhelmingly rural country with extremely limited access to media. Most of its basic infrastructure was destroyed by Indonesian soldiers and militia proxies when they pulled out in 1999, after a UN-sponsored referendum on separation.

The government budget of $60 million was entirely paid for by the United Nations and other donors this year. The only real export, coffee, is facing a global slump. As a result, when the UN mission that has governed the country since its 1999 independence referendum hands over full power on May 20, East Timor will remain reliant on international aid.

"I know the expectations are high and the challenges are great,'' Xanana says. "The people have put their trust in me, because they think I can do something for them. But we must be patient. If after 15 years of independence their living standards have risen, then we can say we've achieved something."

Despite his landslide victory, his presidency will be scrutinized. And the party watching most closely is the one he became synonymous with during the 24-year war of independence -- Fretilin.

While Xanana was transforming himself from a seminary student and would-be poet into a guerrilla leader of tactical brilliance, a core group of exiles from the party were living abroad and planning their return.

The Fretilin returnees are led by Mari Alkatiri, who taught law while exiled in Mozambique. He will be the equivalent of prime minister in the new government. Over the years, the exiles drifted politically apart from Xanana. But on returning home, they won a two-thirds majority in the country's new parliament, partly by trading on Xanana's name.

"This is the political fault line that's going to color East Timor's development," says a Western diplomat in Dili, the capital.

Friends say Xanana, who ran for president as an independent, is worried that Fretilin is so determined to claim the spoils of independence for itself that it is loosing sight of the risks to this tiny Pacific island nation.

Xanana wants to create a government of "national unity" that shares power with small parties and lessens the possibilities for resentment to simmer. "This civil society is still as an embryo, that is why we have to work out some ways to help it develop,'' Xanana says.

Mr. Alkatiri and his supporters, meanwhile, think the key to the future is firm, nearly one-party rule. They want a tight grip on parliament and the cabinet and a minimum of debate, which they worry could paralyze the government.

"We want a government that's competent and can run the country, we don't want a government made incompetent by including the leaders of this or that small political party," says Fretilin's Estanislaw de Silva, who will be the agriculture minister.

The Constitution, written by a parliament packed with Fretilin loyalists, leaves the balance of power firmly in their favor and the president with a largely ceremonial role. "Xanana may want a government of national unity, but he was told to go and look at the Constitution," Alkatiri told reporters.

Yet Xanana is so popular that many analysts say that his vision for East Timor may yet prevail. As the man who led a heroic, seemingly doomed resistance against the world's fourth-largest nation, he has a credibility that the Fretilin leaders can't touch.

"Xanana will make some concessions, but Mari Alkatiri will not be flexible enough, because he is looking like an authoritarian," says Mario Carrascalao, the leader of the small Social Democrat Party. "Xanana knows the real problems of the people. Alkatiri came back after 24 years away: He knows Mozambique," says Mr. Carrascalao.

Where Xanana is warm and casual, Mr. Alkatiri is reserved and formal. Where Xanana glows in the public spotlight, Mr. Alkatiri is strongest as a backroom politician.

Xanana arrived with his 18-month old son in his arms at a beachside bar to deliver his victory speech. He had to pause to shush the child as it fidgeted about. He then sent him outside to eat a banana while he finished. Mr. Alkatiri spoke from the press room at the UN's headquarters.

East Timor's development now hinges on this clash of personalities -- Xanana, who appears to have the people on his side, and Alkatiri, who has the letter of the law on his.

"To the East Timorese, [Xanana] is independence," says the diplomat. "His powers may be constitutionally limited, but I wouldn't like to be the politician who becomes publicly identified as opposing him."

East Timor: The road ahead

The Straits Times - April 19, 2002

Lee Kim Chew -- East Timor's newly-elected President Xanana Gusmao, a poet and freedom fighter, loves the Portuguese language. It gives him a sense of identity.

Like many East Timorese who fought the Indonesians for independence, he draws inspiration from the historical past to face the future.

East Timorese look to Portugal, their colonial masters for four centuries, because it is the Portuguese roots that keep them distinct from the Indonesians who annexed their homeland in 1976.

This is why the newly-independent East Timorese have adopted Portuguese as one of the country's official languages, even though only 17 per cent of the people speak the language and 63 per cent speak Bahasa Indonesia. There was once also talk of adopting the Portuguese escudo as the new currency.

For East Timorese, all this is necessary to make a clean break with the past because speaking in Bahasa Indonesia and using the rupiah are painful reminders of Jakarta's brutal rule during the Suharto years.

But East Timor risks being a historical oddity in South-east Asia if it harks back too much to history. It will hamper its integration in South-east Asia and make the difficult task of reconciliation with Indonesia even more intractable.

East Timor will be formally independent on May 20 when United Nations administrators hand over the running of the terrority to the country's newly-elected leaders.

Sadly, the world's newest nation will also be among the world's poorest. Many of its 738,000 people are malnourished and jobless.

The most urgent question now is whether independent East Timor can stand on its own feet. Laid to waste by pro-Indonesia militiamen after the 1999 independence vote, it is starting from scratch.

The World Bank estimates that it will cost up to US$300 million in the next three years to rebuild the ravaged country. It now subsists on foreign aid. Foreign donors pumped some US$300 million into the country last year, but this will dwindle to US$55 million in 2004, well before East Timor can generate its own funds from offshore oil and gas reserves.

To complicate matters, it is locked in a bitter dispute with Australia over the share of revenues from gas fields in the Timor Sea. The dispute may torpedo the Timor Sea Treaty they signed last July to exploit the oil reserves that could provide East Timor with US$180 million in annual royalties over 20 years.

There is little to speak of East Timor's nascent economy. Its other main hopes are in coffee exports and eco-tourism, but both are barely developed.

East Timor is toying with the idea of joining Asean. This, perhaps, is its best hope of getting the economy off the ground. But Asean membership is a distant prospect and will not happen unless the Indonesians say yes.

To start with, the border between East Timor and Indonesia's western half of the island, where pro-Jakarta militiamen roam freely, is still a no-man's land. Which is why UN peacekeepers are needed. And some 50,000 East Timorese are languishing in refugee camps in West Timor.

Also, Indonesian military leaders are still smarting over the loss of East Timor, and they are unhappy that several senior officers have been put on trial for human-rights abuses there.

General Wiranto, the former military chief, blames the UN for the killings in East Timor after the 1999 plebiscite. In his book Goodbye East Timor, he writes: 'There are a few people who are proud to see Indonesia as the second country in the world, after Yugoslavia, where a rights tribunal is being held to try military and police personnel, ignoring their dedication to their country.'

His sentiment is widely shared in the Indonesian military and political establishment, especially among the nationalists who opposed East Timor's independence.

The question is whether Jakarta's troubled history with East Timor will be a new source of friction in South-east Asia. Much depends on how it deals with the East Timorese leaders, who remain deeply suspicious of the Indonesian military.

Mr Gusmao seeks reconciliation but his proposal to grant amnesty to pro-Indonesia militiamen pits him against his former comrades in Fretilin, the dominant party in the new East Timor Parliament.

It is likely that UN peacekeepers will be stationed in East Timor to keep the pro-Indonesia militiamen at bay after UN administrators relinquish control of the territory next month. UN administrative help is also needed for the next few years because the East Timorese have neither the machinery nor experience of government.

All told, East Timor needs a lot of help and faces an uncertain future. To find its niche in South-east Asia as an independent political entity, it has, above all, to make peace with Indonesia. If not, estrangement from its giant neighbour can only spell more trouble.

Parliament speaker urges Megawati to snub East Timor bash

Reuters - April 18, 2002

Jakarta -- Indonesia's parliament speaker on Thursday urged President Megawati Sukarnoputri to snub next month's celebrations marking the formal independence of East Timor, which Jakarta once ruled with an iron fist.

East Timor will officially become the world's newest nation on May 20 after being under UN administration since it voted in 1999 to break from Indonesian rule, a decision that triggered an orgy of violence from pro-Jakarta militias opposed to the move.

"The time is not right to visit because East Timor still remains a sensitive issue. According to our colleagues in parliament ... the president should not visit East Timor," speaker Akbar Tandjung told reporters when asked about an invitation for Megawati to attend the May 20 ceremonies.

East Timor's independence hero and former anti-Indoensian guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao was on Wednesday declared winner of the tiny territory's first presidential election, a victory that prompted warm words from Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda. Gusmao spent seven years in a Jakarta jail for taking up arms against Indonesian rule.

Wirajuda said Megawati, a nationalist who opposed the 1999 UN- organised ballot, had not decided whether to go there for the celebration. More than 185 heads of state have been invited, although some nationalist Indonesian MPs have already expressed hostility to the possibility Megawati might attend.

Jakarta should also seek to establish full diplomatic ties with the former Portuguese colony when the "time is right," Tandjung said without elaborating.

Timorese leaders have said Megawati's attendance at the ceremonies would be an "eloquent" sign of how far relations have come since pro-Jakarta militias, with backing from the Indonesian military, ravaged the territory after the independence vote.

The United Nations estimates more than 1,000 people were killed before and after the vote to end 24 years of Indonesian rule.

Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, a member of parliament's commission on defence and foreign affairs, told Reuters that MPs had no problem with the East Timor government and its people, but said it was unnecessary for Megawati to attend.

"The invitation is coming from the UN and this is just a symbolic gesture to transfer power with the presence of the international community, therefore the president should not go," Baharuddin said.

Disparate elements play havoc in the Timor Sea

Melbourne Age - April 18 2002

Rod Myer -- The impasse between joint venture partners in the Sunrise gas deposit in the Timor Sea highlights doubts over plans to pipe gas from beyond Australia's north coast to SouthEast Asia, and illustrates how unstable joint ventures can be.

Woodside last year decided it wanted to reduce its development risk on the Sunrise project so it brought in a major player, Phillips Petroleum, which took 30 per cent.

The consortium, Woodside, Shell, Phillips and Osaka Gas, looked at the economics of bringing Sunrise onshore and sending part of its output down a pipeline to southern Australia but decided, according to Woodside, it did not stack up.

They have opted instead for a $5 billion floating platform technology developed by Shell. This means no gas for southern markets; the technology is designed to export bulk LNG to Japan, China and North America.

Phillips is now objecting, saying it wants onshore processing and a southern pipeline, and plans to tell Prime Minister John Howard why, in a meeting today. As a joint venture partner it can stall the whole project if it does not get its way.

Woodside and Shell have 60 per cent between them so the platform will be built or the project will be scrapped, but the onshore option is history.

Since the days of the errant visionary of the Whitlam ministry, Rex Connor, who advocated questionable borrowing to fund a national pipeline, the transfer of gas from the north has been seen by its proponents as a holy grail in national development.

Two likely candidates have emerged in recent years, with each being accepted as the favourite. Along with the Timor Sea, there is a plan by Australian Gas Light and Malaysia's Petronas to pipe gas from highland Papua New Guinea down the Queensland coast.

One northern believer is Bill Nagle, chief executive of the Australian Gas Association, a retail gas industry lobby group. "Our very strongly held position is that after 2006 we will need (gas from) the Timor Sea or PNG or somewhere else," Mr Nagle says.

Supply is an issue, and AGL and Origin Energy are restive. They face a renegotiation of their supply contracts from 2006, and see the prospects of higher prices as the Cooper Basin gas fields begin to wane.

Both have taken different paths to compensate for that perceived shortage. AGL says the northern option is the way to go; it has pinned its hopes on the $1.5 billion PNG pipeline which would earn it a return and get gas to its major markets via the Moomba terminal.

Origin, on the other hand, is looking south, saying the answer lies in getting more gas from the Southern Ocean. It has pledged to build a pipeline between Victoria and South Australia to carry gas from the Otway fields which, as an equity partner, it plans to develop.

Origin spokesman Tony Wood says talk of piping gas from the north discourages southern exploration. Nonetheless, he believes new fields such as Yolla, Minerva, Thylacine and Geographe will provide significant supplies in the future.

With Sunrise off the agenda, the northern option depends on PNG getting up. AGL has pledged to take 50 petajoules a year but the developers need contracts of 140 petajoules to bring the $6 billion project to life.

That means signing big contracts with power stations and smelters in North Queensland, which may not happen fast enough to bring gas in by 2006, and the southern fields will have to carry the load.

But with the PNG deposit holding 15 trillion cubic feet, the North West shelf 80tcf and Timor at least 22tcf, while Bass Strait has at best 5tcf left and the Otway maybe 3tcf, the northern option will one day be implemented.

Magical realism to grim reality

Sydney Morning Herald - April 18 2002

Hamish McDonald -- On a roadside in rural Balibo, among knots of people lingering to chat after casting their vote in their country's first presidential election last Sunday, different traditions mingle in the friendly greetings between two old Timorese women.

They are dressed in batik sarongs and lace blouses, and smile with teeth blackened by betel nut. But with silver hair piled up in ancient European fashion, they pepper their local Tetum language with Portuguese words, and brush cheeks on both sides with the distracted elegance of Parisian dowagers.

The previous evening, local society turned out at the Acait cafe in the seaside capital of Dili. Timorese families, elderly Portuguese and jowly Chinese businessmen sipped glasses of dao and vino verdhe or fruit cocktails strengthened with the local arak. They danced in a classic ballroom style, and watched slim boys and girls strut through a fashion show of partywear made with ethnic weaves of fine multicoloured stripes.

A hybrid culture as layered as these village textiles is now reasserting itself in East Timor. It is woven from five centuries of influence from Portugal, the Catholic Church, an intense quarter-century of Indonesian rule and a clannish local background coloured by systems of honour, retribution and the sorcery known as lulik.

With this re-emergence, we can start to see the character of our newest neighbour: a mixture of the fatalism and turmoil of the Roman Catholic south of Europe, the gaiety and frenzy of the Malay world, a touch of Australian practicality imparted to exiles now returned, and a stubbornness and devotion that is all its own.

A bizarre and unprecedented exercise in nation-building by the United Nations approaches its climax at midnight on May 19, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan formally hands over sovereignty to Jose "Xanana" Gusmao, 56, the former resistance leader and political prisoner of the Indonesian occupiers. Gusmao this week became the country's first elected president.

For the past two years, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, headed by suave Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, has kept 8500 foreign troops as peacekeepers across this tiny land. More than 1000 hired experts and volunteers from 50 nations have been setting up new courts, a police service, an army, a university, a school system, radio and television broadcasters and an administration.

Swarms of contractors and trades people from Northern Australia have laboured to repair burnt-out buildings and re-establish power, water and telephone services.

Sun-blasted men in shorts, elastic-sided work boots and with ponytails and mullets poking from the back of their caps are everywhere in Dili, driving about in utes laden with hardware, sinking Fourex and Bundy in pubs like the new Roo Bar, where the decor is outback workshop: rusted corrugated iron walls festooned with old tools.

A sandal-wearing young crowd of educated volunteers adds a relatively quieter note. They clutch water bottles and ride motorbikes around town and staff the dozens of non-governmental aid organisations that have set up operations to train and counsel East Timorese in social projects.

A staggering $2.4 billion has been spent in protecting East Timor and helping it get back on its feet following the devastation wrought by the Indonesian army and its locally raised militias after the August, 1999, ballot brought an end to a nightmarish 24-year occupation.

Now this period -- of what one Latin American UN official calls "magical realism" -- is coming to an end. The number of peacekeeping troops is being reduced to 5000 by the end of June and to 2500 by the end of the year. By May 20, only a quarter of the UN's foreign civilian staff will remain, with a changed mission that makes them advisers, not bosses, to the Timorese administration.

Already the UN transitional administration is quietly taking stock of the computers, vehicles, air-conditioners and other gear it will take away. Where visitors were once grateful for beds in converted shipping containers, barges and convent dormitories, there are now vacancies in many of Dili's small hotels. The exotic crowd of diverse skin colours and uniforms is thinning out in the brasseries that serve imported food and wine.

After a hectic three years of reconstruction, spending by the UN and international donors will begin to fall away from June, leading to a likely two years of little or no economic growth. The UN administration's finance ministry has warned that the urban economy especially is in for a "negative shock".

The new defence force has only about 600 of its planned 1500 troops out of basic training. The 3000-strong police force is barely moving up from traffic and crowd control. The UN-run radio and television service will cut out on May 20 unless legislation and funding is quickly made available. The nascent finance ministry and central bank are desperately searching for enough Timorese with economic and accounting skills. How much help the UN continues to provide will be decided by the UN Security Council in the first week of May, but it is likely to be substantial: the world body is unlikely to risk undermining one of its notable successes in a chequered record of interventions elsewhere.

A meeting of donor countries will follow in mid-May with pledges likely to keep support at about $US130 million a year over the next two years, before the first substantial revenue begins to flow from Timor Sea oil and takes East Timor to economic self- sufficiency later in the decade.

The new Democratic Republic of East Timor has some of the now passe revolutionary flavour and the mestico or half-Portuguese leadership that Gough Whitlam disparaged in his meeting with Indonesian president Suharto in 1974-75. Aside from Gusmao, who emerged as a significant leader well into the occupation, political circles are replete with figures from that period -- many of whom returned in 1999 after long periods of exile in Europe, Australia or Portuguese-speaking Africa.

The Fretilin party has re-emerged as the only strong electoral force, with about 65 per cent of the 88 seats in the constituent assembly that has become the first parliament. Its long-time central committee member, Mari Alkatiri, will almost certainly be the first prime minister.

His policies, however, have so far eschewed the original revolutionary aims of Fretilin and have been utterly in line with the conventional economic ideas of foreign donors. Alkatiri's interim cabinet has already lined up East Timor for membership of the International Monetary Fund and chosen the US dollar as the national currency. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have opened offices in Dili, and will keep tight strings on aid through a trust fund system.

A decision has been taken to put most Timor Sea oil revenue in the bank and only spend the interest. With careful cultivation of non-oil taxes and limits on spending, this would allow the current level of moderate-sized government to carry on indefinitely, on the basis of oil field developments already committed.

New fields and pipelines -- possibly combined with seabed boundary adjustments in Timor's favour -- could bring a bonanza, but until then Timorese politicians will need good fiscal discipline to maintain what economists call "intergenerational equity" -- that is, not blowing the benefits of non-renewable resources.

This discipline will be one of the main tests of a national leadership split between president Gusmao and prime minister Alkatiri. Gusmao's vote of about 80 per cent and the low level of spoilt ballots and abstentions (encouraged by Fretilin) will enhance his moral authority to question cabinet policies.

His most effective constitutional power as president could be his control over the appointment of the chief justice and senior prosecutors, meaning he can encourage them to go after wayward politicians and officials.

But can a country as small as this maintain such constitutional checks and balances in practice? The army, police, electoral commission, judiciary and national broadcaster may struggle to maintain their non-partisan ethos in the face of pressure that will surely come -- whether from Gusmao, Fretilin or social and business elites in a nation where everyone seems to know each other.

It may be that the church, under its irascible bishop Carlos Belo, will emerge as the real guardian and watchdog of the polity, although religion gets only a passing mention in the new constitution. The other conflict is about inclusion in the new republic. Some of the new leaders returned to East Timor only after 1999's passage of fire, educated and prosperous after years in the West. Many thousands who endured starvation or suffered torture and imprisonment have no role in the government, or any employment at all.

Some resistance veterans have been recognised in associations and efforts made to create work for them, but many others -- known as the isolados -- are forming themselves into militia-style guards and asserting an auxiliary relationship to the regular 1500- strong army. Other groups could develop into a more threatening muscle-for-hire.

Culture will also be a battleground. The resistance leadership's attempt to re-introduce the Portuguese language, currently spoken by only 5 per cent of East Timorese, is aided by a massive teaching program funded by Lisbon through its Camoes Foundation.

But the younger people listen to Indonesian music, read trash novels by popular author Ronny S, and routinely use Bahasa mixed with Tetum. While 400 students from East Timor are attending universities in Portugal, about 1200 are at Indonesian colleges.

With such a variety of political, social and cultural interests, East Timor will be a republic like no other in our region.

East Timor's near destroyed Dili thriving again

Reuters - April 17, 2002

Joanne Collins, Dili -- Less than three years ago East Timor's seaside capital was a charred ruin, but now Britney Spears CDs, Singapore noodles and beauty salons are easily found in what is once more a thriving centre.

Dili has traffic jams, restaurants are crowded and infused with the aroma of espresso coffee, and buildings that survived the 1999 violence have been given a coat of paint.

More than 80 percent of Dili's buildings were destroyed by delirious, machete-wielding pro-Jakarta militia following the tiny territory's overwhelming vote in August 1999 to break from 24 years of harsh Indonesian rule.

Piles of twisted metal and corrugated iron still lie in the gutters, and sandbags and razor wire erected by the international force which moved in to halt the destruction surround some buildings.

But with business buzzing and the territory last Sunday peacefully electing former independence hero Xanana Gusmao its first president, there's a strong sense the former Portuguese colony is coming back to life as it counts down to formal independence next month.

"The reconstruction of buildings is something very visual and helps give the people a feeling of hope, that things are going forward," said Portuguese architect Pedro Reis who has played a key role in helping rebuild the tiny territory over the past two years.

Restoring East Timor from the ashes will be a major task for the widely popular Gusmao who as expected won a crushing election victory against his only rival Francisco Xavier do Amaral when the results were announced on Wednesday.

Make over

One of the more noticeable changes has been the rebuilding of the prominent waterfront residence of Bishop Carlos Belo, where several thousand people sheltered from rampaging gangs of militia.

The Portuguese-era house now bears few scars from the post-ballot violence. It has almost been fully reconstructed, the exterior has been painted pink with blue trimmings and a crumbling Virgin Mary statue has been taken away. "I am not sure why the bishop chose pink, maybe the contractors just came in and did it," said Olandino Xavier, who lives in the bishop's compound.

Workers have been setting a furious pace in recent weeks to finish the building where the Pope's representative will stay during independence celebrations on May 20.

Reis said there was a concerted push to clean up Dili in readiness for the thousands of foreign dignitaries, celebrities and media expected in East Timor for the celebrations.

Coordinating the reconstruction of territory from scratch has been a mammoth task. Most materials were imported as builders lacked even hammers and nails. "We found lots of tradesmen with previous experience but they were a bit disorganised because they had lost everything," Reis said.

Rebuilding has been on a much smaller and slower scale outside of Dili, where people live far more simply and are isolated from the rest of the world.

Big spenders

Timorese born Australian Jose Teixeira said no one could have predicted the boom that has swept Dili since the independence vote and he is not expecting investment to grind to a halt once the United Nations -- which has run East Timor since the 1999 vote -- winds down its mission.

"I returned to East Timor in November 1999 and there has been tremendous change during this time -- we are a million light years away from where we were then," said Teixeira, a senior adviser to the director of investment and tourism.

The top three investors in East Timor were neighbours Singapore, Indonesia and Australia, he said. "The level of investment has continued to be maintained at the same level since before the constituent assembly elections last August," he said. "We have clay brick factories and asphalt plants going up and there are proposals for sugar mills and mineral water is being bottled here."

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said East Timor is likely to face a tough period in 2002-2003 due to the UN's withdrawal but that solid private sector investment would foster growth of around six percent per year. Some analysts say East Timor's economy contracted by as much as 40 percent in 1999-2000 and grew some 18-20 percent in 2000-2001.

Refugee repatriation delayed

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang -- The more than 140,000 East Timorese refugees living in West Timor can not return home till March 20 at the earliest due to transportation problems.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization of Migrants (IOM) based in East Timor's capital Dili can not provide transport as all its vehicles are being used for the presidential elections and for the planned transfer of authority from UNTAET to the new East Timor government.

However, the refugees are expected to return to East Timor after the transfer of power is completed and the former Indonesian territory declares its independence on May 20.

East Timor held its presidential elections on Sunday with Xanana Gusmao expected to easily win the race to lead the new country for the next five years.

Col. Moesanip, chief of the East Nusa Tenggara Military District, regretted the delay in repatriating the refugees, saying both the UNHCR and IOM had not discussed the issue with the Indonesian government.

"I was surprised over the weekend when I received a report that UNHCR and IOM representative in Dili had turned down thousands of refugees, who have registered their repatriation, attempts to go back home," he told The Jakarta Post in the West Timor capital of Kupang on Monday.

He added he had asked both the UNHCR and IOM to submit their applications for the Indonesian government to provide transportation for the refugees if they could not do so.

Moesanip said he was optimistic that the majority of the around 143,000 East Timorese refugees in the province would return home soon after May 20. "Only refugees who are servicemen and former leaders of pro-Jakarta militia groups will stay in the province and their number will be around 10,000," he said.

Asked on the situation in refugee camps, Moesanip said there were several camps which were prone to conflicts because they were housing more than 1,500 servicemen who were deployed in East Timor.

"Military barracks in the province could not accommodate the servicemen refugees who are East Timorese descents, and we have no funds to build special barracks for them," he said, saying they would be reassigned and stationed outside the province. "Despite their race, the servicemen must comply with the military oath that they must be ready to be assigned to any tasks both at home and overseas."

Moesanip said the East Timorese refugees who had left the military were traitors who had betrayed their military oath and had no right to receive any payments from the government. More than 800 refugees who have joined the military in East Timor will continue to be paid pension funds from the Indonesian government until East Timor's independence is declared.

East Timor poll exposes political rifts

Deutsche Presse Agentur - April 15, 2002

Dili -- Almost anywhere else there would be unalloyed delight in an 86-per cent turn-out for a presidential election.

But this is East Timor, the world's soon-to-be newest nation, and Sunday's poll has pundits reflecting deeply on why 14 voters in every 100 either stayed at home or spoiled their ballot papers.

They don't doubt that war hero Xanana Gusmao will have a handy margin when the results are declared on Wednesday, but they worry that the poll has exposed clefts in the body politic that bode ill for the future.

Last time around, at the parliamentary elections in August, 91 per cent cast a vote, giving the Fretilin Party 55 of the 88 seats in parliament and paving the way for Mari Alkatiri to become prime minister on independence day, May 20.

Alkatiri was among those who played truant from the polling booth on Sunday. He has fallen out with Gusmao, and while he didn't call on Fretilin followers to boycott the poll, he led by example.

Gusmao ran as an independent; Fretilin did not put up a candidate. Gusmao's only rival was Francisco Xavier do Amaral, the leader of a party that only scored 8 per cent of votes at last year's parliamentary election. Amaral does not expect to win.

The worry is that come May 20, East Timor will have a prime minister who is not on speaking terms with the president.

After breaking away from Indonesia after a 1999 United Nations- supervised referendum, East Timor settled on a semi-presidential system. The real power was to be with parliament. The president was to be more of a figurehead.

Gusmao, who lacks a lust for power, initially turned down any role in the running of the country. But he was persuaded to put his name forward for president when it was impressed on him that foreign aid donors, international business and neighbouring Indonesia and Australia wanted someone they knew and someone they could trust in a position of power.

The reasoning was that, although on paper the president is not all that mighty, a huge mandate from the people at the ballot box would give him the clout to balance the power of Fretilin and keep its hot-heads in check.

Some are still predicting that Gusmao will get over 80 per cent of the popular vote. But they concede that the smaller the margin, the less influence he will have over governance. To exercise moral authority, he needs a big mandate from the people.

This tiny nation of 750,000, perched on half an island at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, desperately needs the goodwill of the international community. While it has a share of revenue from oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea, the only cash crop for the farmers who make up the bulk of the population is coffee.

Alkatiri has a bit of form as a prickly politician. Last year he needed a lot of persuasion to attend a signing ceremony with Australian government officials for the joint development of the Bayu-Undan gas project in the Timor Sea in which 90 per cent of the revenues will go to East Timor and the remainder to Australia.

Alkatiri initially said personal animosities generated during the bargaining meant he could not bring himself to shake hands on a deal that is set to bring Dili 7 billion US dollars in revenue over the next 17 years.

Gusmao, jailed in Jakarta for seven years for his resistance to Indonesia's often brutal 24-year occupation of East Timor, is charming and easy to get along with. He is loved and revered by his people and respected by well wishers in the international community.

Above all he is patient. East Timor, a Portuguese colony for 400 years, had to endure almost a quarter of a century of rule from Jakarta before it finally freed itself from colonization in 1999.

As president, Gusmao would serve five years alongside putative prime minister Alkatiri. This is why a huge vote of confidence is important. To many political analysts, Gusmao needs to garner more than the 57 per cent of the vote that Fretilin won at last year's parliamentary election to fulfill the role of counterweight to Alkatiri that they have set for him.

East Timor gets its tongues in a tangle

Deutsche Presse Agentur - April 15, 2002

Dili -- The government buildings around it are gutted, but surviving intact as a minor miracle in the center of Dili is a billboard urging the locals to speak good Indonesian, the language of East Timors most recent colonial master.

The Indonesians are gone, kicked out at terrible human cost three years ago. East Timor, for 24 years a colony, is just weeks away from becoming the world's newest independent country.

Oddly enough, the leadership has skipped back several generations and is adopting as its chosen tongue Portuguese, the language of the first colonial master. Such is the controversy surrounding this decision that a banner put up in the battered capital to promote the use of Portuguese would likely be defaced.

Given that only around 15 per cent of East Timor's 750,000 people speak any Portuguese at all, picking such an unpopular lingua franca needs some explaining.

To Xanana Gusmao, the likely first president of a tiny country that has mighty Indonesia to its north, south, east and west, adopting Portuguese will help shore up East Timors national identity and help resist a blending back into the archipelago.

"Portugal gave us this identity historical, cultural and religious that allowed us to be different from the Indonesian archipelago," Gusmao said. "It is not nostalgia, it is fundamental to our identity.

Gusmao, who learned Indonesian during a seven-year stretch in a Jakarta jail for his role in the resistance, believes that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. To him, its necessary to continue highlighting the differences between the half-island and the rest of the archipelago.

Gusmao notes that, alone in the string of islands that stretches from west to east farther than the continental United States, East Timor was the only territory with its own language and its own distinct colonial heritage. Without those differences, he claims, independence would not have been won.

The one quarter of East Timorese who are under 20-years-of-age are alarmed at the prospect of learning a new and difficult language. To most of them, Indonesian had become the language of everyday discourse, the language they were taught at school and the language that almost all the schoolbooks were printed in.

East Timor is a linguist's nirvana. Tatum, one of 19 local languages, is the most widely spoken, and is a link to the Timorese who live on the other side of the border in Indonesian West Timor.

Portuguese is the language of the East Timor elite, the assimilados those like Gusmao who have a Portuguese parents or grandparents. Indonesian, though, is the language that around 65 per cent of the population have in common. And, unlike Tatum, its a language with an extensive vocabulary and fixed grammar.

East Timor's particular history has thrown another language into the cauldron: English.

Mari Alkatiri, the academic who next May 20 will become the prime minister, fled his homeland and was brought up in Portugal. But there are many others who sought sanctuary elsewhere and have brought back with them a fluency in English.

Linus Lopez, a 26-year-old now driving taxis for a living, spent five years in Australia. He has a brother who went to Canada and took out a passport but now wants to return. "I think English is the right choice. Why should we take the language of the Portuguese? They never helped us. They just up and left in 1975. They left us nothing. We owe them nothing," Lopez said.

In response to the clamour for English, Gusmao admits that of course, "English will be important to our education but insists that we dont need to have English as our national language because it is international, everybody everywhere speaks English, or tries to speak it, like me."

Gusmao, Alkatiri and other national leaders have softened their campaign to have Portuguese anointed as the top tongue. They seem to be coming round to a free-market approach, in which languages would compete to gain market share.

But that itself presents a dilemma. Indonesian has been excised from the school curriculum and Portuguese taken its place. But what of the court system, where there are not enough Portuguese speaking judges and hardly any Portuguese speaking criminals?

Portugal has offered to fund the spread of Portuguese. Lisbon has promised to pay for 150 Portuguese teachers in a three-year program that will cost 52 million US dollars.

Woodside angered by Timor gas tactics

Melbourne Age - April 17 2002

Barry FitzGerald -- Woodside Petroleum yesterday turned on United States oil and gas giant Phillips Petroleum, accusing it of delaying a $5 billion development of the Sunrise gas fields in the Timor Sea so it could protect its gas position in the Californian market.

The attack by Woodside follows the turmoil created on Monday when Phillips rejected a radical Woodside-supported plan by Royal Dutch/Shell to develop Sunrise using the world's first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) plant.

Phillips, a 30 per cent partner in the Sunrise gas resource, stunned the other partners when it said its preference was to pipe the gas to Darwin for sale to the domestic market, claiming it had greater benefits and less risk.

An angry Woodside, 34 per cent owned by Shell, yesterday dismissed the Phillips claims, saying that Shell's FLNG concept would cost $2 billion less than the onshore option and would create an all-up project value of about $30 billion.

Speaking after the Woodside annual meeting in Melbourne yesterday, the group's managing director, John Akehurst, said the economics were compelling for the FLNG proposal.

"On the basis of a straightforward comparison between an onshore facility for Sunrise and an offshore facility for Sunrise, that leads to a $2 billion capital saving in providing the same LNG production for export," he said.

Mr Akehurst said the reluctance of Phillips to throw its lot in with the FLNG proposal had much to do with its battle with Shell in the US.

"There is a competitive battle going on in the West Coast of the US to supply California with gas."

Mr Akehurst said Phillips and Shell were each proposing to grab a share of the growth in the market by building LNG receiving terminals.

"One can see that the competition between those two companies to deliver gas into that area is a crucial factor in how we go forward with Sunrise."

He said he hoped that Phillips would recognise what was a substantial revenue-creating opportunity. "It would allow us to diversify our customer base into the United States and secure very lucrative long-term contracts."

The project timetable for Sunrise calls for a final investment decision towards the end of next year and the start of LNG production before the end of 2007.

Mr Akehurst said the design and front-end engineering could be started without the support of Phillips, but it was not the preferred option.

Under the Sunrise joint venture between Shell (26.56 per cent), Woodside (33.44 per cent), Phillips (30 per cent) and Osaka Gas (10 per cent), all partners must support big development decisions.

Originally it was planned that although gas would be supplied to the FLNG plant on the same equity basis, Shell would wholly own the plant and the gas marketing rights.

However, Woodside revealed yesterday that Shell was now offering the partners a combined 49 per cent share in the facility (Woodside's direct interest would be 22.3 per cent).

Whether that sweetener will help to win over Phillips remains to be seen.

Industry observers suspect that Phillips will continue to tighten the screws on Shell. They believe Phillips will end up supporting FLNG, but not before Shell offers additional sweeteners.

At yesterday's Woodside meeting, shareholders were told the group's tender for a supply contract of three million tonnes a year of LNG to China was in its final stages. Success in the tender would underwrite another expansion of the $15 billion North-West Shelf gas project.

Woodside chairman Charles Goode said group profit in 2002 would be influenced by secondary tax payments on oil production from the Laminaria and Corallina oil fields. Much would depend on oil prices and exchange rates

Six witnesses fail to appear in Timor rights trial

Agence France Presse - April 16, 2002

The trial of five Indonesian officers accused of failing to prevent a 1999 massacre in East Timor hit a snag when six witnesses failed to turn up.

The human rights court adjourned on Tuesday for a week after chief prosecutor Darmono said the three policemen, two soldiers and one civilian witness could not appear due to "technical problems."

The five defendants -- four middle-ranking army officers and one police officer -- are accused of gross rights violations by failing to prevent the massacre of 27 civilians in a church in the southern border town of Suai on September 6, 1999.

Darmono said the civilian, East Timorese Domingus dos Santos, could not appear due to "the inability to get confirmation from the UNTAET (the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor) office to present him as a witness". He said dos Santos would be "a witness of victims of the incident in Suai".

The three police witnesses are non-commissioned police officers stationed at Kupang in Indonesian West Timor and the two soldiers are stationed in provinces outside Java island, Darmono said.

He said one soldier had told the court he was still recovering from concussion while the other had no means of transport to Jakarta. Darmono later told reporters that the three policemen had told prosecutors they had "no means of transportation and accommodation". "But police in Kupang have informed us that they will be able to come to Jakarta next Monday," he said.

The five defendants are among 18 military, police, civilian officials and East Timorese militiamen who face trial in the rights court over army-backed attacks by pro-Jakarta militias against East Timorese independence supporters in April and September 1999. If convicted, the defendants face sentences ranging from 10 years in prison to death.

Militiamen organised by senior Jakarta officials waged a campaign of intimidation before East Timor's August 1999 vote to split from Indonesia, and a "scorched earth" revenge campaign afterwards. They killed hundreds of people, torched towns and forced more than 250,000 people into West Timor after the vote.

Indonesia is under strong international pressure to bring offenders to justice, with the United States refusing to resume full military-to-military relations until it does so.

TNI rejects proposal on land travel to/from Oecusse

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

Jakarta -- The Indonesian Military (TNI) rejects an UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor) proposal that East Timorese public buses be allowed to pass through Indonesian territory to ply return routes between Dili and Oecusse, the East Timorese shelter in the Indonesian provinceof East Nusa Tenggara, an officer said on Monday.

"We cannot guarantee their [East Timorese] safety in passing through the Kefamenanu and Atambua regions [in East Nusa Tenggara]," Col. Moeswarno Moesanip, commander of the Wirasakti Military Resort Command, said as quoted by Antara in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara.

He said UNTAET had asked Indonesia to agree that passengers and cargoes of public buses or other modes of transportation from Dili to Oecusse, and vice versa, needed not be transferred to Indonesian means of transportation to pass through the Kefamenanu and Atambua regions.

"Even if Jakarta agreed to the UNTAET proposal, as a security chief in the border areas, I could not guarantee the safety of East Timorese riding their own modes of transportation," he said.

Moesanip said the Kefamenanu and Atambua regions still had populations of militant East Timorese refugees and the local security units would have a difficult time in anticipating eventualities if the UNTAET proposal was implemented.

He said Maj. Gen. Willem T. da Costa, commander of the Udayana Military Region overseeing Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara provinces, had also rejected the UNTAET proposal which was currently being negotiated by UNTAET and Indonesia's foreign affairs ministry.

Moesanip said East Timorese buses or other modes of transportation from Dili or Oecusse could only run up till the borders with Indonesia. At the borders, passengers and cargoes from Dili or Oecusse must transfer to Indonesian buses or other modes of transport to pass through the Kefamenanu and Atambua regions.

In order to transfer to Indonesian buses at the borders, East Timorese would not be required to show their passports "they would be just passing through Indonesian territory," Moesanip said. "Instead of passports, a boarding pass or some kind of ticket might do to allow them to pass," he said.

Oecusse borders Indonesia's district of Central-North Timor. East Timorese, traveling by land or by sea from Dili to Oecusse, and vice versa, should pass the Indonesian territories in the districts of Central-North Timor and Belu, capital of Atambua regency.

Central-North Timor district chief, Hengky Sakunab, had earlier asked Jakarta through a deputy to coordinating minister for economic affairs on investment, Firman Tambun, not to make a decision that would disadvantage the Indonesian border areas.

Australia very generous to East Timor, says Downer

Agence France Presse - April 15, 2002

Sydney -- Foreign Minister Alexander Downer dismissed a claim Monday that Australia had been less than friendly towards East Timor, arguing it had been generous over sharing oil revenues from the Timor Gap.

"We're providing East Timor with 90 percent of the revenue and we're only getting 10 percent," he said. Under the previous Timor Gap treaty with Indonesia, revenue had been divided 50-50, Downer said, adding: "So we've been very generous to East Timor."

His comment followed a claim by East Timor Chief Minister Mari Alkatiri that Australia, which has led an international peacekeeping force in the fledgling nation, had committed an unfriendly act towards his country.

The diplomatic spat, which emerged on the eve of East Timor's first presidential election last weekend, revolves around negotiations between the two nations over rights to oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea. The agreement will be converted into a treaty once East Timor becomes a nation on May 20.

But Alkatiri said the impending signature of the treaty dividing oil and gas reserve royalties was in doubt because of Australia's attitude. He said Canberra had unilaterally withdrawn from negotiations in the International Court of Justice to resolve a dispute over maritime boundaries, which would in turn affect East Timor's share from the lucrative Greater Sunrise field.

Under an arrangement agreed in July, 90 percent of royalties from the joint production area goes to East Timor and 10 percent to Australia. But only around 20 percent of Greater Sunrise falls within the joint production area and 80 percent lies in Australia's area, so East Timor would receive only 18 percent of royalties from Greater Sunrise output.

Alkatiri said East Timor was prepared to negotiate, but would not compromise on maritime borders. Downer said Australia hoped to sign the treaty once final technical details had been resolved.

Gusmao win likely, despite campaign

Melbourne Age - April 14, 2002

Jill Jolliffe -- Guerrilla hero Jose "Xanana" Gusmao is expected to win a sweeping victory today in a poll for East Timor's first elected head of state, despite an organised attempt to reduce his vote.

His only rival in the presidential elections is the elderly Francisco Xavier do Amaral, a nationalist who was president of the short-lived republic declared by the Fretilin party in 1975. He is unlikely to poll more than 25 per cent.

Figures from the right and left of the political spectrum among the 439,000 eligible voters have declared their support for Mr Gusmao, although the leaders of the governing Fretilin have refused to back him.

Mari Alkatiri, Chief Minister of the Fretilin Government, has made contradictory statements on his voting preferences. In one interview, with Portugal's Radio Renascenca, he said both candidates were "historic figures" and that if voters liked both "they should vote for the two". He told journalists on Thursday that because he couldn't choose between them he would vote for neither.

Gusmao campaign workers have complained throughout of a concerted effort to encourage voters to lodge informal votes or abstain in order to reduce their candidate's winning margin. They also believe Fretilin leaders are privately directing votes to Mr do Amaral, although the rank-and-file are unlikely to follow.

"We think Mari Alkatiri's statement is very disappointing," spokeswoman Milena Pires said. "For a chief minister who was elected in our first free parliamentary elections to advocate abstention, which is equivalent to a boycott, is a very sad day for East Timor."

Mr do Amaral also distanced himself from the Chief Minister's stand, saying: "As a national leader, he should not have said what he did. He is misleading the people."

The Chief Minister's position drew an angry response from John Bowis, leader of a European Union observer delegation. He said his team had reported from various districts "that there are attempts to confuse voters into spoiling their votes", which was "harassment and undue pressure on people".

He warned that the EU may not endorse the election if such practices were widespread, adding "it is quite wrong ... to fool people into thinking they can validly vote for both candidates".

Despite these problems, the campaign has been conducted peacefully. Refugees from West Timor have been pouring over the border in recent days after Mr Gusmao visited their camps a week ago. Special voter registration stations have been set up to ensure they are included.

Showdown, and a tiny nation comes of age

Melbourne Age - April 13 2002

Jill Jolliffe -- It could have been a Meet the Press show anywhere in the world -- two presidential candidates on stage in elegant suits fielding questions before an audience of politicians, media and diplomats. They debated domestic and foreign policy, with press assessors watching closely

This was different. It was the first presidential election campaign in East Timor, which is about to become the first new nation of the new millennium. The two men under scrutiny were former guerrilla commander Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, 56, and Francisco Xavier do Amaral, 67, a founding father of East Timorese nationalism.

Warm friends, they behaved with utter civility to each other and embraced emotionally when the debate ended. It was the closing debate before tomorrow's poll, in which Mr Gusmao is expected to record an overwhelming victory.

Gusmao campaign organiser Agio Pereira predicts a 70 per cent vote, with a possible 20 per cent for Mr do Amaral, and a high return of spoilt ballots due to a covert campaign to reduce the Gusmao vote.

Mr Gusmao is backed by 10 opposition parties. The governing Fretilin party, which won 57.8 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections last August, does not officially support either candidate. In practice, however, its senior leaders are supporting Mr do Amaral -- although Fretilin followers are likely to ignore their stand and vote instead for Mr Gusmao.

The Fretilin Chief Minister, Mari Alkatiri, said controversially in a radio interview that Timorese people could vote for both candidates -- a move that would invalidate their vote.

At midnight on May 19 the United Nations flag will be lowered in East Timor and be replaced by that of the Democratic Republic of East Timor. Shortly before that, the president-elect will be sworn in by the outgoing UN administrator, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Salvador Ximenes, editor of Dili's main daily newspaper, Suara Timor Lorosae, believes Mr Gusmao's advantage comes from his credibility as a leader. "He's the best placed to win because he led our people to victory," he said. "He was always with us, fighting in the jungle, and then suffered imprisonment because of this. He always behaved like a leader."

Mr do Amaral has also had his share of suffering. Before Portugal's 1974 revolution, the Jesuit-trained schoolteacher influenced a whole generation with his anti-colonial ideas. He became president of Fretilin, and of its short-lived republic declared in 1975, but was later deposed. Between 1977 and 1998, he was detained in the Jakarta house of Indonesian general Dading Kalbuadi, after being captured in a raid on a Fretilin base.

He returned to East Timor in early 2000 as a frail shadow of his former self and many have forgotten his key role. His main support comes from animist Mambai-speaking people in the central mountains. It is insufficient for victory, even adding votes directed to him by the Fretilin leadership under Chief Minister Alkatiri (who believes Mr Gusmao has turned his back on Fretilin followers who did most of the fighting during the Indonesian occupation).

The animist factor is one reason the influential Catholic Church rejects Mr do Amaral and backs his opponent. In February Bishop Carlos Belo declared: "Xanana is a great revolutionary fighter ... for the international community he is the only one with the reputation. They know his work with refugees and in restoring our relations with Indonesia."

Jakarta agrees. According to Mr Ximenes, during Mr Gusmao's visit to Jakarta last July, Political Affairs Minister Bambang Yudhoyono told him in private talks that President Megawati Sukarnoputri hoped he would stand for the presidency.

The antagonism between the presidential favourite and the government party may spell trouble ahead but a victory for Mr Gusmao could open a new phase in regional bridge-building, ending decades of instability.

Voting a serious duty for people of a new nation

Sydney Morning Herald - April 15, 2002

Hamish McDonald, Maliana -- For Isobelle de Araujo it was a bittersweet day. In the early morning she had walked in her best dress to Mass, then joined thousands of other Maliana townsfolk at the public gymnasium to vote in her new country's first presidential elections.

At midday she was back in her family house facing the grassy square of this town close to East Timor's largely unmarked and unfenced border with its most recent ruler, Indonesia. With her children and her sad memories.

In the front garden under a flowering tree is a concrete grave, marked: Carlos Maia, born June 17, 1937, murdered September 9, 1999. Morto por Timor Leste (Died for East Timor).

Isobelle, a dignified woman with a soft voice, recounted how her husband had done military service for the Portuguese, then fled to the forests and hills with the resistance for two years after Indonesia invaded in 1975, then surrendered and worked quietly as a local driver.

When the East Timorese were finally given a say on their future in 1999, Carlos found a job as a handyman with UNAMET, the United Nations mission supervising the ballot, but then found himself and other local staff scapegoated by violent Jakarta-backed militias who mostly shrank from attacking foreign staff.

Even before East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence was announced, UNAMET decided to withdraw its staff from Maliana because of mounting militia violence. Carlos was one of about 45 left behind.

On UNAMET's advice, they took refuge in Maliana's police compound on September 3. In a formal agreement with the UN, the Indonesian Government had promised to commit its police and military to security of the ballot.

Five days later, on September 8, the Indonesian police at Maliana stood back and let militia members enter their compound, where they set about with guns and machetes to slaughter the UN staff. None survived.

Isobelle and the rest of the family rented a taxi the next day, and joined over a quarter of a million East Timorese being driven across the border by the militia in a scheme to discredit the UN ballot. "We had no choice," she said. "If we stayed we would have been massacred."

Isobelle was one of the first to return from West Timor, in October 1999, finding Carlos's remains and burying them in the garden, before patching up her burnt-out house and opening a simple bamboo-sided cafe at the side.

"We think of before -- it makes us a rather regretful," Isobelle sighed yesterday when asked about her feelings on East Timor's historic day, which precedes formal independence on May 20. "But things are better now. Under Indonesia life was more comfortable, but we felt sick at heart."

A high proportion of East Timor's 430,000 eligible voters turned out yesterday to chose between the charismatic former resistance leader Xanana Gusmao and the leader of a short-lived independence attempt in 1975, Xavier do Amaral.

Voting was treated as a serious duty, with families attending church and then lining up to vote at polling centres in schools and offices, run by the new Independent Electoral Commission.

At midday in Maliana's main voting centre, its chief electoral officer, Hipolito Sarmento, said he was almost out of ballot papers after an early rush of voters, although outlying polling stations were still drawing crowds. Thousands of refugees had returned in recent weeks, he said. "Even up to Friday they could get identity papers which allow them to vote."

The border remained open yesterday, said Corporal Patrick Zrno, heading a patrol of Australian peacekeepers, on guard at Batugade road junction, a kilometre back from the main border crossing. Counting the seven days until their battalion, 2RAR from Townsville, ends its latest six-month spell, the soldiers cleaned their rifles as locals chatted.

Although the battalion will be replaced by another from Australia, the virtual end of Indonesian attempts to subvert East Timor's independence through militia infiltrations means the number of UN peacekeepers will drop sharply over this year, from 8,000 to 2,500 if conditions remain peaceful.

Apart from occasional military patrols, poll security was provided by civilian police. Beneath the historic Portuguese fort at Balibo, also occupied by Australia's 2RAR, hundreds of men and women pressed forward in a queue marshalled by young local police trainees under an Australian Federal Police officer, Peter Dilley.

The quietness of the day has created concerns about a whispering campaign aimed at encouraging abstentions and spoiled ballots, attributed to Fretilin party rivals of Mr Gusmao, who is expected to sweep the polls.

In East Timor's adopted political system, most day-to-day powers are concentrated in the prime minister and cabinet drawn from the parliament, which is dominated by Fretilin and whose candidate for prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, has said he would be casting a blank ballot.

Aside from some important powers of appointment over judges and prosecutors, the president's role is largely symbolic - but a very high vote could give Mr Gusmao the political authority to argue with the prime minister and take policy initiatives.

Labour struggle

BII workers stage protest

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

Jakarta -- Hundreds of Bank International Indonesia (BII) employees demonstrated in front of the bank's headquarters on Jl. M.H. Thamrin in Central Jakarta on Monday, demanding the management provide better welfare.

Monday's protest was part of a series of protests staged by the BII worker's union in demand for a better salary and welfare support, El Shinta radio reported.

As of 2:30 p.m. the peaceful protest was still taking place and it was reported that the management had urged the employees to return to work.

The employees also complained about discrimination. They claimed promotions and salary hikes in the company were not based on a "proper merit-based system".

Laborers demand wage hike

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

Bogor -- Thousands of laborers of PT Truba Raya Trading, the producer of FILA shoes, staged a rally in Ciawi, Bogor, demanding the company raise their wages in accordance with the new provincial minimum wage. They also demanded that PT Truba not impose income tax on the workers.

PT Truba is a private company that produces FILA shoes for export to Germany, United States, Canada and Italy. More than 3,000 workers received only Rp 417,000 per month each, although the Bogor administration has established a new wage of Rp 576,000, according to the chief of PT Truba's trade union, Dadang. They also had to pay income tax, from Rp 13,000 to Rp 16,000.

He said that the union and the company had reached an agreement about the wage hike in January, but the company had postponed it. The company claimed that shoes orders had decreased by up to 50 percent.

"Who said the orders are decreasing? We have to work overtime all the time, even on Sundays, to fulfill the orders," said worker Neny. PT Truba could not be reach for comment.

Aceh/West Papua

Two troops, three rebels killed in Aceh

Agence France Presse - April 16, 2002

Two soldiers and three separatist rebels have been killed in Indonesia's Aceh province, the military and police said.

Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels killed two soldiers in the Blangkejeren area of southeast Aceh on Sunday, said Aceh military spokesman Major Zaenal Muttaqin. Muttaqin told AFP on Tuesday that the two were riding on a motorcycle when they were shot by the rebels.

He also said troops killed three suspected GAM members in a skirmish in the Lamno area of West Aceh on Sunday.

Separately security forces on Monday confiscated around 2,000 bullets for handguns and automatic rifles at Kuta Makmur in North Aceh, he said.

Indonesian officials and rebel leaders are scheduled to resume peace talks in Geneva at the end of April.

GAM rebels have been fighting for an independent state in Aceh since 1976. An estimated 10,000 people, mainly civilians, have died since then and more than 400 people have been killed this year alone.

Three soldiers detained over murder of Papuan leader

Agence France Presse - April 16, 2002

Jakarta -- Three Indonesian army officers have been detained as suspects in the murder of Papuan separatist leader Theys Hiyo Eluay, the military police chief said Tuesday.

"Three officers of the Indonesian armed forces, all of whom are members of the Tribuana Task Force, have been detained in connection with the death of Theys Eluay," Major General A.B. Sulaiman told AFP.

The task force, most of whose members are from the army special forces Kopassus, is based in Jayapura, the provincial capital of Papua.

Sulaiman declined to give the identities or the army unit of the three but said they had been detained at national military police headquarters in Jakarta since last Wednesday.

The armed forces said in a statement the detentions were based on the result of questioning of about 100 witnesses and evidence confiscated by the military police.

"The preliminary conclusion shows that three rogue TNI [armed forces] officers must undergo legal questioning process as suspects and they have been detained by military police investigators," the statement said.

A team from the military police had launched its own investigation into Eluay's murder.

Eluay was found dead on November 11. He had been abducted the previous evening by an unidentified group as he drove home from a celebration hosted by the Tribuana Kopassus unit in Jayapura.

Media reports said the three detainees are a major, a captain and a low-ranking soldier.

Military may threaten political unity, BP gas investment

Wall Street Journal - April 19, 2002

Timothy Mapes, Jakarta -- The Indonesian military's controversial behavior in resource-rich Papua province could threaten the country's political unity and one of its biggest planned foreign investments.

An independence movement has simmered for decades in Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya, but it hasn't erupted into the open armed rebellion that has affected Aceh province on the opposite end of the archipelago.

President Megawati Sukarnoputri still has a chance to calm the situation and assuage popular demands for independence if she can convince Papuans that they can expect better treatment from Jakarta, say many Papuan community and religious leaders. But how Ms. Megawati deals with the armed forces in Papua, which lies on Indonesia's eastern frontier, will test her skill at holding this far-flung country together.

Western governments, while supporting Indonesia's territorial integrity, are carefully monitoring her efforts. US Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce visited the province earlier this week, after a visit by a delegation of European ambassadors last month.

But recent actions by the powerful military -- which operates largely autonomously in Papua, is deeply involved in local businesses such as logging, and has violently suppressed separatist groups in the past -- illustrate how difficult a challenge Ms. Megawati faces.

A special commission's investigation into the November murder of Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay has implicated members of an elite military unit, known as Kopassus, in the killing, say officials familiar with the inquiry's findings. The soon-to-be- concluded investigation has produced forensic evidence, including fingerprints, and eyewitness accounts that already have led to the arrest of three Kopassus soldiers formerly based in Papua's capital, Jayapura, say military officials.

Separately, the military in Papua is trying to intervene in one of Indonesia's biggest and most-promising investments: a $2 billion plan by British energy company BP PLC to develop a huge natural-gas project in the territory.

Last month, Maj. Gen. Mahidin Simbolon, the military commander for Papua, paid an unexpected visit to BP's base camp on Bintuni Bay, accompanied by about a dozen soldiers and their wives and girlfriends. The visitors strolled around the project site brandishing automatic weapons, witnesses say. Their presence "made us uncomfortable. It was at odds with how the camp is normally run," a BP official says.

In a meeting, Gen. Simbolon told BP officials that the military has an obligation under Indonesia's constitution to protect national assets such as BP's project. Although BP hopes to prevent the military from assuming control of security for its venture, Gen. Simbolon made it clear that only a ruling by Ms. Megawati could deter the armed forces from taking charge of security, say BP officials who attended the meeting.

The alleged military involvement in the Theys murder is the most sensitive political issue in Papua and Ms. Megawati's thorniest problem. Mr. Theys was the chairman of the Papuan Presidium, the leading advocate of a nonviolent struggle for independence for the territory. He was found strangled in November after he attended a party held by local military commanders. Witnesses told investigators they saw Mr. Theys's car forced to stop on his way home by another car that was later identified as belonging to Kopassus. Mr. Theys's car and body were found the next day in a ravine beyond four military checkpoints that usually prevent civilian cars from passing.

The findings pose a dilemma for Ms. Megawati, who has long maintained cordial ties with Indonesia's military -- an institution that she has praised as the guardian of the nation.

Since coming to power in July, Ms. Megawati has tried to get Papuan residents to accept a future within Indonesia by offering the territory more revenue from its natural resources, and by pledging to allow wider scope for expression of Papua's culture. Ethnic Papuans, people of Melanesian descent indigenous to the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, differ sharply in culture and religion from most other Indonesians whose ancestry lies in Asia. Papuans are largely Christian, while the vast majority of other Indonesians are Muslims.

Unless Ms. Megawati can show that she is prepared not only to punish soldiers directly involved in Mr. Theys's murder, but also to prosecute officers found to have ordered the killing, community leaders in Papua say the president's promises of a new deal for the territory will ring hollow.

"We need to see that she is committed to this," says Karel Phil Erari, a Papua priest and human-rights campaigner who is a member of the special commission investigating Mr. Theys's murder. "The people want to know who told Kopassus to kill Theys, and why."

Tom Beanal, the most senior official in the Papuan Presidium after the death of Mr. Theys, says, "If the Indonesian government fails to answer these questions, we would think that Indonesia is not serious in solving the problems in Papua."

Few military analysts expect Ms. Megawati will be able to deliver what the Papuans want, however. The Kopassus unit has a reputation for ruthlessness, and has long been deployed in some of Indonesia's hottest trouble spots, including Aceh and formerly Jakarta-controlled East Timor. Its members were accused of playing a key role in widespread violence against civilians after East Timor voted for independence in August 1999, behavior that prompted the US government to curtail military ties with Indonesia. Although Indonesia is currently conducting trials of a few officers implicated in those atrocities, no senior commanders have been charged.

"Kopassus is a very powerful and independent unit," says Kusnanto Anggoro, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, who says the unit has considerable autonomy even from Indonesia's military high command. "I'm not sure whether justice will ever be revealed in this case," he says.

Indonesia's military commander, Adm. Widodo, has said the three Kopassus men suspected in the Theys murder will be punished severely if convicted.

While less likely to prompt immediate Papuan protests, the military's apparent effort to intervene in BP's gas project, ostensibly to protect it, poses a different kind of problem for Jakarta: It could put an important foreign investment at risk.

Aware of the potential dangers of operating in Papua under military "protection," BP had hoped to avoid the problems encountered by companies such as ExxonMobil Corp. in Aceh and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. in Papua. Both those ventures are guarded by large contingents of Indonesian soldiers who have often clashed with local residents, prompting allegations of human-rights abuses in Indonesia and abroad. Critics have portrayed the foreign companies as witting or unwitting accomplices to the alleged abuses.

BP has hired military and security advisers to develop a "community-based security" program that it hopes will prevent its project from being caught in any future confrontation between soldiers and armed rebels -- a situation that prompted ExxonMobil to close its liquefied-natural-gas plant in Aceh for four months last year. In ExxonMobil's case, human-rights activists have argued that the company is morally responsible for the alleged torture and killings of civilians by troops based in or around the company's facilities -- charges that ExxonMobil rejects.

BP is now scrambling to show Jakarta that its community-policing plan can ensure the security of the plant -- scheduled to be completed by 2006 -- without the need for a military base on or near the site. "We do not envisage a direct, on-the-ground military presence at the project," says a BP spokesman.

A spokesman for Gen. Simbolon declined to comment on his recent visit to the BP site or on the military's view of security requirements in the area.

But the military might be difficult for BP to resist, given its past record of protecting foreign investments in the territory. An official from an environmental organization that works extensively in Papua contends that the military has a history of creating its own "security threats" to justify the need to employ its services. "Right now, there is no security threat at all," he says. "But six months from now, you can be sure there will be."

US blamed for rights violations in Papua

Jakarta Post - April 17, 2002

R.K. Nugroho, Jayapura -- The students of state-run Cenderawasih University in Jayapura, Irian Jaya, lodged a petition on Tuesday that the United States of America be held responsible for the prevalent human rights abuses in province since the territory's integration into Indonesia in 1963.

The petition was lodged by student delegates, led by Stevan Kambuaya, in a meeting with visiting US Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce and his entourage at the university campus near Jayapura.

Hundreds of students held a peaceful demonstration outside the meeting venue to protest the province's integration into Indonesia.

"The United States of America should be held responsible for the human rights abuses, including the killing of charismatic Papuan tribal leader Theys Hiyo Eluway following its full support for the province's integration into Indonesia," said Kambuaya.

He said all Papuan students rejected the undemocratic referendum on the province's integration and called for a democratic one to allow the Papuan people to determine their own future.

The students called on the US government to take the initiative to set up an international inquiry into Theys' murder. At least three teams from the local police, the Indonesian Military and the central government were established to investigate Theys' murder but, so far, no one has been held responsible. The police and military teams have given the indication that the local military was involved in the killing.

Theys' body was found in a village bordering Papua New Guinea on Nov. 11, 2001, a day after he attended the celebration of Heroes Day at the housing compound of the Army's Special Force (Kopassus) in the city. Aristoteles Masoka who drove Theys to the celebration is still missing.

Boyce declined to respond to the petition and called on the students not to give him political statements because his visit was aimed at observing the development program in the province.

The ambassador said he and his government appreciated the special autonomy for the province and the Papuan people's political aspirations to be freed from coercion, intimidation and backwardness. According to him, the special autonomy is a golden opportunity for the local people to achieve a better future.

He also said the US government would continue to provide financial assistance to help accelerate the development program, especially in the field of education and health.

In a meeting with local officials on Monday, Boyce reiterated Washington's political stance on the province's integration with Indonesia, saying that his government would never support the secessionist movement in the province. Before moving to the city, the ambassador and his entourage also visited the American copper and gold mining company PT Freeport Indonesia in Timika.

Papuans fear trouble with militant group in town

InterPress Service - April 15, 2002

Prangtip Daorueng, Jakarta -- The arrival of an Islamic militia group in Indonesia's restive province of West Papua is sowing fear among residents about sectarian conflict like that seen in other provinces before -- and community leaders want its members out sooner than later.

Fearing violence similar to that seen previously in Sulawesi and Maluku, Papua religious communities, ranging from Christian churches to Muslim groups, are demanding that authorities put pressure on the Laskar Jihad group to leave. At the same however, rights activists say the group is not likely to leave the province, formerly known as Irian Jaya, that easily.

The group is reported to have sent members from the nearby province of Maluku by ship to the regions of Sorong, Manokwari, Nabire and Fak Fak in West Papua.

Laskar Jihad was created at the end of 1999 by Muslim radicals in Java as a response to the massacre of 400 Muslims by Christians in North Maluku, the mired in communal conflict. Led by a 38-year-old religious teacher named Ja'far Umar Thahib, the group claims to have 10,000 members, of whom 2,000 have received military training.

In an interview with the English-language daily "The Jakarta Post" on April 11, Laskar Jihad spokesman Ayip Syafruddin confirmed that members were in West Papua to expand the organization's wings -- and have set up six regency branches there.

But, learning from the experience of Maluku, where the Muslim- Christian conflict was stoked by the Laskar Jihad that said it had gone for missionary work, local leaders and citizens are working to counter the group's moves.

The Laskar Jihad began to upset Papuans when it began distributing VCD cassettes depicting sectarian fighting in Maluku islands, says Muhammad Thaha al-Hamid, secretary general of the pro-independence Papua Presidium Council.

Despite the group's claim that its activities related only to religion and charity, reports from the West Papuan capital of Jayapura show otherwise, says an official with a human rights group based in Jakarta.

He says Laskar Jihad members have begun inflammatory preaching that pits Muslims and Christians, and distributing leaflets with the same message. "As far as we know, the group has taken part in Friday prayers at the mosques. The preaching goes like this, 'We [Muslim] are the majority of Indonesia. We must struggle for Muslims in Indonesia," he said.

"Never in history have Christians and Muslims in West Papua fought each other. That's why both Christian and Muslim religious leaders there said outsiders like the Laskar Jihad must leave Papua," he added.

Apart from Laskar Jihad trying to upset long-held religious harmony in West Papua, some also fear the introduction of a religious angle into demands for independence by some groups there -- a factor that would serious security implications.

John Rumbiak, chairman of the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy (ELSHAM), told a seminar in March that Christians are already being accused by security forces as being behind the separatist movement, which has been around for decades.

"Now, the security forces have also made accusations that Christian groups are merely hiding behind the veil of human rights while they are actually waging a separatist movement," he pointed out. Calls to oppose "Christian separatism" are heard more and more often, he added.

As a result, many fear that the seeds of conflict between Muslims and Christians have been planted deeply and could one day result in violence if provoked. Likewise, some see this all as being motivated by Jakarta.

According to a report by the Geneva-based International Crisis Group (ICG), a Laskar Jihad leader said that its members were trained under the guidance of members of the Indonesian armed forces in their private capacities.

In early 2000, Laskar Jihad leader Ja'far had openly said that 3,000 members would leave Java for Maluku to carry out "missionary activities" for Maluku victims. Later reports said that the group had launched attacks against Christians with the support of military units.

In July 2000, Indonesian Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said, "The dispatch of Laskar Jihad and any other forces has reached almost 10,000 people in the last three months and they have become the main reason for the ongoing ground conflict."'

A peace process is now underway in Maluku and the presence of the Laskar Jihad has decreased, but Christian leaders still see it as an obstacle in the peace process.

Many are understandably worried about Laskar Jihad's presence in resource-rich West Papua, a former Dutch colony that has been in tension with the central government in Jakarta for decades.

Rights activists say West Papua is known to have one of the worst areas in terms of human rights abuses in Indonesia, apart from Aceh and Maluku. They say most abuses have been blamed on Indonesian armed forces, since Jakarta formally annexed the province in 1969.

West Papua's tensions with Jakarta also come from the presence of the military, the transmigration policy of the Suharto government and the revenues that it brings to the central government without getting adequate benefits in return.

An attempt by President Megawati Sukarnoputri to ease tensions by applying the special autonomy bill to West Papua in January -- which gave a bigger share of revenues to the province -- was rejected by both the local political body and the separatist group Free Papua Movement, known by its Indonesian acronym OPM.

Tensions also grew with the mysterious murder of charismatic leader Theys Hiyo Elouy last year. Latest reports on the investigation say Theys' kidnapping and murder were carried out by seven military men from the Army's Special Forces, or Kopassus.

In an interview early this month with the Australian Broadcasting Corp, Papuan Pastor Martin Luther Wanma said that local Islamic leaders had assured him the Laskar Jihad are not a threat to Christians because they are there for missionary work.

But he pointed out that the group had established headquarters in Manokwari and are publishing an inflammatory newspaper called "Laskar Jihad Bulletin"."In this newspaper, they promote and provoke the Muslim people here to rise against the Christian community. It's the reason why the Christian society or Christian community here and Papua people here reject Laskar Jihad," Pastor Wanma said. "Before, they lived together and there is no problem, no problem, and they worked together, but now it's a new phenomena," he added.

A human rights activist in Jayapura cites reports that the group has started combat training in a camp in Fak Fak in West Papua, but says there has been no response to residents' request for action from security officials.

"It is very unclear what the meaning of the Laskar Jihad group is both for Indonesia and Papua. But for us they are a threat, and people are now very scared," he said.

American ambassador meets PDP officials

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

R.K. Nugroho, Jayapura -- Despite Washington's official stance on Papua, visiting US Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce met with officials of the pro-independence Papua Presidium Council (PDP) and visited the grave of former PDP chairman Theys Hiyo Eluway in the Irian Jaya provincial capital of Jayapura on Monday.

Upon arriving at Sentani airport, Boyce and his entourage were greeted by a group of traditional dancers who brought them to a field leading to Theys' tomb where he was asked to lay a floral wreath.

The ambassador said he was surprised when the dancers and hundreds of locals "escorted" him and his entourage to Theys' grave because it was not included on the agenda of their two-day visit.

Boyce also received an unscheduled lunch hosted by PDP Secretary General Thaha Al-Hamid in Pondok Ria Restaurant in the city after meeting with local officials and visiting the state-run Cenderawasih University. The lunch and closed-door meeting with the PDP officials sparked a protest from local police because it was not included on the ambassador's schedule.

US Embassy spokesman Stanley Harsha told the police officers that according to the schedule, the ambassador and his entourage was scheduled to take lunch at 2p.m. local time at which time they were free to do their own thing. PDP officials who asked for anonymity said that during the lunch the suspect investigation of Theys' murder was discussed.

The presidium was established three years ago by pro-independence Papuan figures who are fighting for the province's independence peacefully.

During the meeting with Irian Jaya Governor Jaap Salossa and military and police officials, Boyce insisted that it would not support the secessionist movement in the province. "We do not support the separatist movement which is trying to separate the province from the Indonesian unitary state," he said.

The ambassador said his visit was aimed at seeing the development program in the province under the special autonomy. He said he also wanted to see the use of the US government's financial assistance to the province, especially in the education and health fields.

Meanwhile, some 300 rebels and their families pledging to resume normal lives, gave themselves up to the local military in the Botom Subdistrict, Jayawijaya Regency.

May. G.T. Situmorang, spokesman for the Trikora Military Command overseeing Irian Jaya, said the rebels and their families were received by Lt. Daru and Lt. Col. Sianturi in a ceremony in the subdistrict. The Papuan families were reportedly given financial assistance and seedlings to resume their normal life in their own villages in the subdistrict.

Corporate globalisation

Labor unions step up anti-privatization campaign

Jakarta Post - April 17, 2002

Jakarta -- Hundreds of workers from some 15 labor unions representing workers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) staged an anti-privatization protest in Jakarta on Tuesday as part of a campaign to pressure the government to abandon the program, which is seen as being crucial to the country's economic recovery hopes.

Secretary-general of the Federation of SOE Labor Unions Nazir Safrie said that the privatization program would only inflict losses on the country, including massive layoffs.

"The government just wants to sell, sell and sell the SoEs ... to meet its budget targets. We are against such measures," he told reporters. He added that a privatization law must first be introduced before the government proceeded with the sell-off program.

During the one-day rally, the workers went to the presidential palace and to the Office of the State Minister of State Enterprises to voice their demands. But neither President Megawati Soekarnoputri nor Laksamana Sukardi showed up to meet them.

Labor unions participating in Tuesday's rally included those from the West Sumatra-based cementmaker PT Semen Padang, telecommunications firms PT Indosat and PT Telkom, Bandung-based aircraftmaker PT Dirgantara Indonesia, and Surabaya-based electricity transmission company PT PJB.

The current anti-privatization campaign could trigger larger protests with the potential to derail, or put a brake on, the government's privatization program.

Over 120 labor activists from around the country gathering here for a labor union conference had earlier warned against pursuing trade liberalization and the privatization of SOEs as it would only create misery for Indonesian workers.

The government has included 25 SOEs in its 2002 privatization list as part of a bid to raise around Rp 6.5 trillion (US$698 million) to help plug the state budget deficit, which is estimated at Rp 42 trillion, or 2.5 percent of gross domestic product.

The House of Representatives' Commission IX on financial affairs recently approved the plan, although some legislators still insisted that the government must continue to consult with them on the privatization of individual SOEs.

The privatization program is also part of a deal agreed with the International Monetary Fund, which is sponsoring the country's economic reforms. Backtracking on such a key program could strain relations between the Fund and the government, which in turn would affect investor sentiment, analysts have said.

The government failed to meet its privatization program target last year for various reasons, including widespread protests over plans to sell a controlling stake in cementmaker PT Semen Gresik to Mexican cement giant Cemex SA de CV.

Separately, in Padang, West Sumatra, the Semen Padang labor union reiterated on Tuesday its opposition to the sale of Semen Padang to Cemex. They said that they would launch a campaign to expel Cemex officials from the province if they dared to go ahead with their acquisition plan. Semen Padang is 100 percent owned by Semen Gresik.

The workers demanded that the government spin off Semen Padang from Semen Gresik if it wished to proceed with the sale plan.

Meanwhile, Revrisond Baswir, an economist from the Yogyakarta- based Gadjah Mada University (UGM), also said that hasty moves to privatize state enterprises would merely inflict losses on the people. The government should wait until the country's economy recovered from the crisis so as to obtain optimum proceeds from the sale of the SOEs.

Anti-privatisation moves could slow down Jakarta turnaround

Straits Times - April 17, 2002

Robert Go, Jakarta -- Resistance from workers, leading politicians and labour leaders threatens to derail the Indonesian government's ambitious privatisation programme and slow down the recent positive turnaround for the economy.

Mr M. Subagya, an engineer at Indonesian communications giant PT Telkom, thinks the government's privatisation programme will bankrupt the country.

And yesterday, together with more than 600 workers from Telkom and other state-owned firms, he protested against Jakarta's plans to sell 25 firms before the year's end.

Sporting "Refuse Privatisation" headbands, they carried banners bearing slogans such as: "Privatisation loots the people" and "Are we willing to be colonised again?" Mr Subagya said: "The country cannot afford to continue selling assets. The government needs to think of the people's concerns." Demonstrations are still a dime a dozen in Indonesia.

But events focusing on State-owned Enterprises Minister Laksamana Sukardi's ambitious privatisation strategy are getting some attention from analysts, who warned the resistance threatens to derail or slow down the privatisation programme, and to halt the economy's recent positive progress. The demonstrating workers are not the only cause for concern.

Several leading politicians, including Dr Amien Rais, speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly, and Vice-President Hamzah Haz, have played nationalistic cards and indicated their support for anti-privatisation drives.

Last week, Dr Amien repeated warnings that Indonesia is selling too many assets to foreign investors, and at prices that were too low: "If the government continues this trend, I fear this country will go bankrupt soon."

Labour leaders, such as the head of the Indonesian Prosperity Trade Union, Mr Mukhtar Pakhpahan, and well-respected chairman of the Indonesian Workers' Struggle, Ms Dita Indah Sari, have also resisted privatisation.

Mr David Chang, president-director of brokerage DBS Vickers Ballas Indonesia, said anti-privatisation drives continue to have a negative impact on investor sentiment.

"The demonstrations, and the politicians and labour leaders who support them, dampen investor interest in this country. They definitely slow down privatisation, and could undermine the current positive momentum," he said.

Mr Laksamana's ministry is tasked with raising 6.5 trillion rupiah (S$1.3 billion) this year from selling state assets, but he has set his sights higher and projected potential revenues of up to 9.25 trillion rupiah.

Major assets slated for sale include airport-management firm PT Angkasa Pura, steel-manufacturer PT Krakatau Steel and communications companies Telkom and PT Indosat.

Corruption/collusion/nepotism

Illegal gambling business generates huge money

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

Ahmad Junaidi, Jakarta -- The University of Indonesia's Institute for the Study of Social Institutions said on Monday there were 13 large illegal gambling dens currently operating in the city, with a daily turnover of between Rp 2 billion (US$200,000) and Rp 10 billion each.

These illegal gambling dens are able to operate with the help of corrupt military and police personnel, and city administration officials, according to the institute.

A large gambling den employing between 1,000 and 1,500 people spends Rp 150 million a day in "protection fees", according to the institute's research and training coordinator, Rizal Hikmat.

According to the institute, 12 of the 13 illegal gambling dens are located in West Jakarta -- some operating in restaurants, shopping centers and hotels, with the majority of their patrons coming from the middle and upper classes. The other gambling operation is located in the recently closed Kalijodo red-light district on the border between West and Central Jakarta.

The institute's research, conducted in cooperation with the city administration between July and December last year, also found that there were 30 illegal lottery operators in the city's five mayoralties, with a total turnover of Rp 48 billion a week. The lotteries are drawn twice a week.

Rizal said some 1.2 million "ordinary" people regularly took part in the illegal lotteries. "We found many housewives complaining that the money for daily necessities, food and to pay their children's school fees was used by their husbands to buy lottery tickets," he said.

He said a driver whose daily income averaged Rp 50,000 might spend Rp 20,000 of this amount on the lottery. Rizal suggested the administration crack down on these illegal lottery operations because of their social impact.

But he recommended the city legalize the large gambling dens and proceed with its plan to open casinos in the Thousand Islands. "Localizing the gambling could improve the local economy and infrastructure, such as sea transportation to the islands," said Rizal, who is also a lecturer in the university's sociology department.

The city's plan to open casinos in the islands has been met with a mixed reaction. Rizal claimed the institute spoke with leaders of the country's two largest Muslim organizations, the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhamadiyah, who individually agreed with the idea of localizing gambling.

But he believes the plan will be opposed by security officers, who would stand to lose huge amounts of protection money paid to them by illegal gambling operations. He also predicted the plan to localize gambling would be rejected by certain hard-line groups who have connections with security officers, mainly police and military personnel.

Separately, the secretary of the Indonesian Entertainment Business Association, Adrian Mahulete, estimated that there were between 35 and 50 illegal gambling dens currently operating in the city with a total daily turnover of Rp 200 billion.

"Ten of these are operated under the names of entertainment centers under our association. However, we are not able to punish them because they conduct their activities secretly," he said.

Local & community issues

Lampung Prosecutor's Office attacked

Jakarta Post - April 17, 2002

Bandar Lampung -- Hundreds of villagers in Lampung province ended a protest against the detention of their representatives with violence as they clashed with police and attacked Bandarlampung Prosecutor's Office.

Protesters from the villages of Sukamaju and Kotakarang in West Telukbetung subdistrict smashed and threw stones at the windows and doors of the building on Monday night.

The attack was apparently sparked by the refusal by prosecutors to release six village representatives who were arrested while dealing with a land dispute.

The protesters arrived at the scene at 9 a.m. on Monday and dispersed at 11 p.m. after a clash broke out, which the police tried to quell by firing rubber bullets. At least one policeman and two protesters were injured in the scuffle.

The protesters were among the residents involved in a land dispute with property developer PT Graha Cemerlang, which was accused of grabbing tens of hectares of their land.

Human rights/law

Police may arrest Tommy Suharto's lawyers for bribery

Agence France Presse - April 16, 2002

Jakarta -- Indonesian police may arrest defense lawyers for allegedly bribing witnesses to lie during the trial of Tommy Suharto on murder and illegal weapons charges, a report said Tuesday.

Jakarta police on Sunday arrested Rahmat Hidayat, a former security guard at an apartment block allegedly used by Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, the youngest son of the former Indonesian dictator.

They have accused him of perjury by denying his earlier statement to police which implicated Tommy in a weapons stash found in the building.

Police say Hidayat had received two million rupiah (215 dollars) from the defense team, which is led by Elza Syarief, to lie when he testified in Tommy's trial on Wednesday last week.

"The arrest of Rahmat Hidayat by the Jakarta police is legal. So Elza and partners should be ready in case we arrest [them]," said spokesman Senior Commisioner Anton Bachrul Alam, quoted by Detikcom news portal.

Prosecutors said Hidayat and two other security guards from the Cemara Apartments had named Tommy as the owner of the weapons. But the three retracted their statements during last week's trial and denied they had signed police statements implicating Tommy.

The police chief for corruption investigations, Anton Wahono, was quoted by Detikcom as saying eight witnesses were being questioned in the alleged bribery case. "We have gathered 70 percent of evidence to follow up this case," Wahono said. He said police would also question Syarief, who has denied any knowledge of a bribery attempt.

Alam told the Kompas daily that police were also searching for the two other guards who were also suspected of perjury.

Tommy, a former millionaire playboy, is charged with ordering the July 2001 drive-by killing of a Supreme Court judge who had sentenced him to jail on a graft conviction, and with illegal possession of weapons. He could face the death penalty if convicted on either charge,

Police allege they discovered a cache of weapons when they raided the central Jakarta Cemara Apartments on August 5, 2001, and a second cache of weapons in a later raid on a south Jakarta house allegedly used by Tommy.

Trial of attackers of Kontras office starts

Jakarta Post - April 17, 2002

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta -- Seven defendants went on trial on Tuesday for attacking the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) office building on Jl. Mendut, Menteng, Central Jakarta, last month.

The indictment presented by chief prosecutor Firdaus Dewilmar at the Central Jakarta District Court did not clearly stipulate the reasons for the attack on March 13.

According to the indictment, the attack occurred following a rally by 300 people in front of the office, accusing the nongovernmental organization of being discriminatory toward their relatives, who were members of military-backed vigilante squads (Pam Swakarsa). The protesters demanded equal treatment to the Pamswakarsa victims following a riot protesting the Special Session of the People's Consultative Assembly in November 1998.

Two of the seven defendants had tried to meet in person with Kontras founder, Munir, but later on, the attackers vandalized the office, including property inside.

The trial of the defendants took place only about a month after the incident. The trial process was quick as none of the seven defendants was represented by lawyers.

One of them had tried to raise an objection to the indictment but was overruled by presiding judge Silvester Djuma.

After the prosecutors presented the indictment, three police officers testified as witnesses against the defendants. They were present at the location during the attack. They claimed that they could not prevent the attack. "They outnumbered us," said one of the officers, Mahmudi.

If convicted, the seven defendants could be sentenced to seven years in jail. The court will resume next week to hear witnesses from Kontras.

The attack on the Kontras office has attracted public attention. Human rights activists said that the attack was an escalation of terror. Kontras has become the target of violence over the past few years. A grenade explosion damaged several cars parked in front of the office in 2000.

News & issues

Student protest mars Megawati's Bandung visit

Jakarta Post - April 16, 2002

Yulie Tri Suwarni, Bandung -- Bandung Police detained on Monday seven student protesters for allegedly violating measures taken by police to secure President Megawati Soekarnoputri's official visit to Bandung on Monday.

The detained students were part of 500 demonstrators grouped in several Muslim student groups, including the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Front (KAMMI), the Bandung-based Indonesian Youth Front (FIM-B), Indonesian Nationalist Student Movement (GMNI) and the Islamic Students Association (HMI).

The students protested against Megawati's "noncritical" stance toward significant issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict. They demanded that she take a firmer stance on Israel's butchery of Palestinians and send peacekeeping troops to the Middle East.

Bandung Police chief Sr. Comr. Hendra Sukmana said that the seven students, including those from the University of Indonesian Education (UPI), Padjajaran University and the State Academy of Islamic Studies (IAIN), had been detained for protesting within "the Ring I security area" in Bandung. "They will only be detained for the night as a warning," Hendra told reporters on Monday.

The seven were identified as Budi Yusaminudin, Anwar Sugiyana, Fatah Fahmi Fikri and Heru Srikabiyanto of UPI; Syarif Pirous of Telkom technical school; Izma M Supriyadi of Padjajaran University and Abdul Fatah Syamsidi of Sunan Gunung Djati State Academy for Islamic Studies (IAIN).

The demonstrators had also demanded that the government allocate a larger budget for the national educational system, disband the former ruling Golkar Party, and put on trial human rights violators, including high-ranking Indonesian Military (TNI) officials.

A brief clash ensued between security personnel and the demonstrators. The police hit the students with their batons, but nobody was reported seriously injured or hurt in the clash.

During Monday's visit, Megawati inaugurated a new building for the School of Mathematics and Physics at the UPI campus on Jl. Setiabudi. Among the guests at the inauguration, built with a grant worth 3.4 billion yen from the Japanese government, were Japanese Embassy Charge d'Affaires Hideaki Domichi, and UPI rector Fakry Gaffar.

In her speech, Megawati said that Indonesia's problems involving the management of infrastructure included poor planning, poor concern for ethics, rampant corruption and the continuous misuse of funds. "We always insist that other people comply with the law, but we ourselves are reluctant to do it," Megawati said.

During her visit, Megawati was accompanied by her husband Taufik Kiemas and Minister of National Education Malik Fadjar.

Jakarta kingpins want new casinos on their doorstep

Straits Times - April 15, 2002

Jakarta -- In a bid to protect their business interests, underground gambling kingpins are pressing for legal casinos to be built in the capital here instead of on a northern island chain.

About 250 fierce-looking protesters from Metro Watch, an organisation allegedly backed by powerful underworld figures, besieged Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso's residence on Saturday.

They were protesting against his call to build casinos in the Seribu Islands but they were told the Governor was not at home. They left after 20 minutes saying they would be holding a bigger protest at the City Administration Office in central Jakarta.

A protest coordinator, who asked not to be named, admitted Metro Watch had financial support from businessmen excluded from the plan to build legal casinos in the Seribu Islands and who wanted a share of the industry.

"I think they were mad about the plan, as the illegal gambling business in Jakarta is being threatened by the administration," he said. "By localising the casinos in the Seribu Islands, all the scattered gambling centres in Jakarta would be eradicated. The administration has already chosen one well-known gambling businessman for the Seribu Islands who happens to be a close friend of the Governor." The coordinator would not identify the people to whom he was referring.

City administration spokesman Muhayat dismissed the suggestion that he and his colleagues had made up their minds on the project.

Another protest coordinator, Noval, said Mr Sutiyoso's proposal to establish casinos in the Seribu Islands would be problematic as they could not be policed effectively. "The most appropriate place is here in Jakarta, as the administration and the police could easily monitor the place. The Seribu Islands are quite far away, which could result in a lack of monitoring and control by the authorities," he said.

The protesters also demanded the administration take steps to prevent gambling from having a negative impact on society, but not to eradicate the business.

Mr Sutiyoso last Thursday signalled that the administration was ready to build infrastructure on the islands. The previous day, Seribu Islands Regent Abdul Kadir revealed that an investor had submitted a proposal for a casino and others had also expressed an interest.

Environment

Unrestrained mining endangering forests

Jakarta Post - April 15, 2002

Jakarta -- A coalition of environmental groups here urged the government to withdraw licenses given to mining companies that plan to operate in around one-fifth of the country's protected forests and conservation areas.

The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also blasted the mining companies for their efforts to force the government to change several regulations in order to legalize their operations.

"They have urged the government to revise Law No. 41/1999 on forestry which has hampered their investment. They want the status of the forests to be changed from protected forests into forest concessions," Chalid Muhammad from the Network of Advocacy for People's Mines (JATAM) told a media briefing last week. Chalid did not reveal the names of those mining companies.

The mining companies have threatened to sue Indonesia through an international arbitrator should the government refuse to open the 11.4 million hectares of protected forest for new operations in Sumatra, Jawa, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara islands, Maluku islands and Irian Jaya. Around 150 mining companies have explored the area.

Longgena Ginting of the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) pointed out the current mining sites have reached more than 35 percent of Indonesia's mainland and have largely responsible for environmental destruction in the country.

The endangered areas include protected forest in Gag-Papua island, Poboya-Paneki forest in Central Sulawesi and Meru Betiri National Park in Jember, East Java.

Health & education

Foreigners may be allowed to own colleges and hospitals

Agence France Presse - April 16, 2002

Jakarta -- The Indonesian government may allow foreign investors to control 100 percent shares in universities and hospitals, a report said Tuesday.

The policy is aimed at preventing rich Indonesians from spending their money on medical treatment and education overseas, the head of the Investment Coordinating Board, Theo Tumion, was quoted as saying in the evening Suara Pembaruan daily. He said the move was being discussed with related ministries.

"Rich people often seek medical treatment overseas. If those hospitals were established in Indonesia, there would not be so much waste of money," he was quoted as saying.

He said prestigious higher learning institutions such Harvard University could open a branch in Indonesia and offer their own curricula. "Even the teaching staff can be all-American," he said.

Presently foreigners who wish to invest in Indonesia must cooperate with local partners. Indonesia has seen a sharp decrease in foreign investment owing to legal and security concerns.

Bisnis Indonesia daily said the government approved 149 foreign direct investment projects worth 489.3 million dollars in the two months to February, compared to 189 projects worth 2.33 billion dollars a year earlier.

It quoted a source at the investment board as saying: "Foreign investors are still worried about the security and legal [uncertainty]. Even Japan has reduced its investments here."

Officials could not be reached to confirm the report.

40 million of Indonesian people go hungry

Tempo Magazine - April 15, 2002

Priandono, Jakarta - About 40 million Indonesian people go hungry, according to Bishow B. Parajuli, Deputy Country Director of the United Nation World Food Program.

He went on to explain that the 40 million people account for 17 percent of the Indonesian population.

"Actually the food supply in Indonesia is sufficient, but people do not have enough money to buy food," Bishow told Tempo News Room, during the Accelerating People's Nutrition Improvement coordinating meeting held in Jakarta on Monday.

A speaker from the Ministry of Health also said that about 100 million of Indonesian people suffer from anemia because of malnutrition.

Dr.Ir. Taufik Hanafi from the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) said: "Indonesia is 102nd out of the total of 162 countries, based on the Human Development Index (HDI)." HDI is a composite index of three variables: education, life expectancy/health and income.

Hanafi went on to explain that Indonesia is 38th based on Human Poverty Index, indicating low rank of life expectancy (40 years), illiteracy, poor access to safe water, poor health care, and malnutrition among children.

Religion/Islam

Muslim leader asks US to help ease poverty

Straits Times - April 16, 2002

Jakarta -- The origins of religious extremism in Indonesia are rooted in domestic issues, such as low education levels and poverty, and not international factors, a prominent Indonesian Muslim figure told US government officials on a recent trip to America.

Mr Syafiie Ma'arif, chairman of Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organisation, Muhammadiyah, urged the US government to abandon its military approach in its fight against radical Muslim movements in Indonesia, and instead focus attention on helping to raise education standards and alleviate poverty.

The US government needed to identify the sources of radicalism and employ the right strategy to deal with the problem. Financial and technical aid, for example, could be delivered to help the country solve sectarian crises in several regions, particularly Poso in Central Sulawesi and Maluku.

A long-term investment in education would also help create an educated and moderate populace, said Mr Syafiie.

Armed forces/Police

Restoring image big job for Kopassus

Jakarta Post - April 17, 2002

A'an Suryana, Jakarta -- The Army Special Force (Kopassus), a much feared unit within the Indonesian Military (TNI), has a long history of ups and downs.

Kopassus was born when the Indonesian Army was struggling to put an end to a separatist campaign waged by the South Maluku Republic (RMS) in 1950.

Facing a tough enemy, Col (Inf) A.E. Kawilarang, the commander of the anti-rebel operation, decided to form a special force to quell the separatist movement, which received support from the former colonial power, the Netherlands.

Kawilarang then appointed former Dutch soldier Rokus Bernandus Visser, who had married a Sundanese and changed his name to Muhammad Idjon Djambi, to train and lead the special force.

Visser was a seasoned combatant and trainer, and was part of the Dutch Special Forces during World War II. He took up the top job in the Special Force Command, which was formally established on April 16, 1952, with the military rank of major. The force remained part of the Siliwangi Military Command until Army Headquarters took it over in 1953 and renamed it the Army Commando Unit.

According to a book written by Robert Lowry titled "The Armed Forces of Indonesia", the special force changed names several times. It was known as the Army Paratroop Command Regiment (RPKAD), which served as the vanguard of the military's cleansing operation against communists in 1966. The name was maintained for a decade before it was changed to the Reconnaissance Warfare Command (Kopassandha). The unit was finally named Kopassus in 1986.

Under different names, Kopassus lived up to its billing as an elite force, whose achievements have drawn international plaudits.

Among its more noteworthy missions since playing a pivotal role in foiling the coup attempt blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965, were rescuing passengers of a Garuda aircraft hijacked to Bangkok in 1981 and releasing 26 people abducted by a Papuan separatist group led by Kelly Kwalik in 1996.

With its proven track record, it is no surprise that Kopassus has become the best training ground for future TNI leaders. Most of the best known and brightest leaders of the Army came from Kopassus, including Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto, Gen. (ret) Benny Murdani, Gen. Tyasno Sudarto and Gen. (ret) Wismoyo Arismunandar.

Kopassus' image quickly became tarnished on the eve of President Soeharto's downfall after the force was involved in an operation to silence opposition groups.

In April 1998, it was revealed that Kopassus took part in the abduction of student activists, who provided the most outspoken opposition demanding Soeharto's resignation. Some Kopassus members in the Mawar Team were later brought to justice.

Kopassus members were also accused of taking part in the mass violence that occurred in East Timor after the historic independence ballot in the former Portuguese colony in September 1999.

Despite the internal reforms to restore the military's image, Kopassus has lately come under public fire again after some of its members were alleged to have been involved in the murder of Papuan independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay on Nov. 10 last year. Three Kopassus soldiers have been tipped as suspects in the case.

Therefore, as it celebrated its golden anniversary on Tuesday, Kopassus could only look ahead to the formidable task of repairing its image in the eyes of the public and satisfying the growing demands for military professionalism, including respect for human rights.

Don't point finger at TNI all the time: Prabowo

Jakarta Post - April 17, 2002

Jakarta -- The former chief of the Army's Strategic Reserves Command, Lt. Gen. (ret) Prabowo Subianto, has urged all elements of the nation not to keep pointing their fingers at the Indonesian Military for all that is happening in the country because the TNI is the "glue that binds the country's unity".

Speaking on the sidelines of the 50th golden celebration of the Army Special Forces on Tuesday, the general turned businessman also rebuffed some statements about Kopassus' declining image.

"You can see it for yourself. The [Special Forces] personnel performance are far more superb now, compared to that during my leadership," the former Kopassus commander said.

The son of world acclaimed economic guru Soemitro Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo, who had spent about 24 years of his military service in the Special Forces, seemed reluctant to reply to journalists' questions.

In a rare appearance since former president Soeharto's downfall in 1998, he simply said that "TNI is the glue of our country, so don't point finger at them (TNI) all the time."

The Indonesian Military has had its image tarnished due to a series of human rights violations, especially under the 33 years of former president Soeharto's authoritarian ruling.

Economy & investment

Paris Club deal boosts rupiah, stock market

Agence France Presse - April 15, 2002

Jakarta -- Indonesia's currency and stock market were higher in early trading Monday after the Paris Club's agreement to reschedule 5.4 billion dollars in government debt.

The rupiah breached the 9,500 to the dollar level for the first time since late last year, and share prices were also sharply higher. At 10.05 am (0305 GMT) the composite index was up 8.695 points or 1.6 percent at 547.965.

After two days of talks, foreign government creditors agreed on Friday to reschedule 5.4 billion dollars comprising both principal and interest and falling due between April this year and December next year. The deal reduces Indonesia's debt burden to a maximum of 2.7 billion dollars from 7.5 billion over the period.

Development aid loans will be repaid over 20 years with a 10-year grace period, and commercial credits over 18 years with a five- year grace period.

Indonesia has total public debts of around 136 billion dollars, almost equivalent to its gross domestic product. The sum includes some 66 billion dollars in domestic debt, arising mainly from a huge bailout of the financial sector after the regional financial crisis of 1997-1998.

One economist described the deal as the best that could have hoped for and said it should be positive for investor sentiment.

Danareksa Securities economist Raden Pardede said Indonesia could not have got a longer rescheduling as 20 years is the maximum permissible. "As a civilised country we must honour the rules of the game. Indonesia is not Nigeria or other African countries which are entitled to get debt haircuts," he told AFX-Asia, an AFP-owned financial newswire.

But the International NGO Forum on Indonesia Development (INFID) said the deal was not a comprehensive or long-lasting solution. It said in a statement that much of Indonesia's debt is "odious and illegitimate in nature" since it was accrued under former dictator Suharto.

With half of Indonesia's people living on the poverty line of one dollar a day, INFID said, creditors were ignoring social obligations. The group urged the Indonesian government to abandon the "unfair mechanism of the Paris Club" and to invite all creditors to a "comprehensive and impartial assessment of the current debt and to seek a sustainable and just solution." It did not spell out what it had in mind.