-Caveat Lector- ----Original Message Follows---- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rich Winkel) To: undisclosed-recipients:; Subject: UN forces in E Timor dig in as militias refuse to give up Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 23:15:51 -0500 (CDT) /** reg.easttimor: 3067.0 **/ ** Topic: AFP: UN forces in E Timor dig in, as militias refuse to give up ** ** Written 12:58 PM Sep 20, 1999 by [EMAIL PROTECTED] in cdp:reg.easttimor ** Subject: AFP: UN forces in E Timor dig in, as militias refuse to give up Peacekeepers in East Timor dig in, as militias refuse to give up DILI, East Timor, Sept 20 (AFP) - Hundreds of multinational peacekeepers Monday dug in for their first night in the East Timor capital of Dili, as the militias which laid waste to the city signalled they had not given up the fight against independence. More than 1,000 heavily-armed troops, most from Australia and New Zealand, with a cutting edge of combat-honed Gurkhas, took up positions at key points in the city, its port and airport, with night-goggles and rifles at the ready. Their unopposed dawn arrival, with the troops chatting with Indonesian army soldiers at Dili's Comoro airport, appeared to signal the beginning of the end of Indonesia's brutal quarter-century occupation of the territory, which has left an estimated 200,000 dead. In a briefing at the end of the day, the spokesman for the Indonesian East Timor Martial Law Command, Lieutenant Colonel Willem Rampangilei, said a total of 1,190 soldiers from at least six countries had arrived by dusk. The number would rise to 2,500 in the next few days, he said. But the militia, apparently all but bannished from the capital they ransacked, said in messages through Indonesian media that they had regrouped just inside the border to defend the unity of Indonesia. "We will not attack the UN peacekeeping troops," the deputy chairman of the newly-named National Unity Front (FPB), Joao da Silva Tavares, told the SCTV private Indonesian television from the town of Balibo. However, Tavares said the group sought to defend "our territory," and the official FPB declaration swore to "defend the wholeness of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia and free East Timor from the chains of neo-colonialism and the grips of new colonialists." But in Dili for the new arrivals, sweating in full combat gear, it was a city with, in the words of one United Nations officer: "No food, no water, no nothing," but the charred remains of the miltia rampage which avenged the 78.5 percent vote for independence on August 30. Major General Peter Cosgrove, the Australian commander of the International Force for East Timor (Interfet), said his troops met no resistance. "This can be seen as an arrival rather than some sort of aggressive military deployment." But he added the city was "still, from my point of view, a pretty risky environment." In the only reported encounter as they patrolled the streets on foot and in armoured personnel carriers, soldiers from New Zealand stopped a man riding a motorbike and confiscated his home-made rifle without any fuss. Interfet is charged with restoring security in East Timor, bringing aid to hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees driven out of its towns and cities by the militias, and upholding the independence vote. Indonesia's martial law commander, Major General Kiki Syahnakri, sent by Jakarta after some troops here openly collaborated with the militia in their two-week spree of murder and destruction, has said he will hand over control to Cosgrove by the end of the week. "The withdrawal of troops is proceeding," Syahnakri said. Monday's air deployment was expected to be followed at dawn Tuesday by the arrival of warships in Dili to unload bulky equipment including more armoured vehicles. While the militia gangs seemed to have virtually disappeared from Dili, several hundred of the thousands of refugees they chased out of their homes were still living in squalor among ruined buildings and along the harbour. Barefoot children wandered along the bay as Indonesian naval vessels prepared to ship them and their families to Kupang, in neighbouring West Timor clearing the area for the arriving troops. A small contingent of US marines travelled with Cosgrove's approval to explore the possibility of moving some of the troops to Baucau, 115 kilometres (70 miles) east of here, to ease congestion at Dili's airport. However, there was no indication how soon the peacekeepers would spread out through the rest of the territory, where up to 190,000 refugees, many sick and starving, were believed to have fled. About 200,000 others had crossed the border to Indonesian West Timor to escape the violence. In Darwin, a spokesman for East Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmao said he had begun steps to set up a government in exile in Australia and intended to appeal to the World Bank for help for the impoverished territory. And in Jakarta, the Australian embassy continued to pay the price of what some Indonesians see as unwarranted intervention, with two crowds of demonstrators picketting the mission. One banner read: "Howard, Go to Hell with your soldiers." ** End of text from cdp:reg.easttimor ** *************************************************************************** This material came from the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), a non-profit, unionized, politically progressive Internet services provider. For more information, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (you will get back an automatic reply), or visit their web site at http://www.igc.org/ . 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