The Nation: Indonesia's economic cr

[suriya@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Indonesia's economic crisis deflects limelight from
E.Timor 

posted at 18:48 hrs (Bangkok time) 

JAKARTA, March 21 -- Indonesia's economic crisis has knocked the long-running East Timor
conflict out of the limelight, but the few reports filtering out of the territory say the situation is getting
worse with diplomatic efforts making little progress. 

Indonesian authorities may even be tightening their hold over the tiny territory of less than one million
people, 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) east of Jakarta. 

Sources close to the Timorese resistance movement say repression has worsened as the economic
crisis saps the morale of the 10,000 odd Indonesian soldiers based on the island. 

The Timorese are also suffering from a prolonged drought that has hit the region. 

Jakarta annexed East Timor in 1975 in a move never recognised by the United Nations, which still
regards the island as under Portuguese administration. 

The next round of UN-sponsored negotiations between Portugal and Indonesia are due to take
place in the last week of March in New York. 

The talks were initially scheduled for the beginning of the month, but were pushed back due to the
People's Consultative Assembly meeting in Jakarta from March 1 to March 11, which returned
President Suharto to office for a seventh five-year term. 

But the peace process, supervised by the United Nation's special representative on East Timor,
Jamsheed Marker, is unlikely to come up with a solution in the short term. 

No date has yet been fixed for a visit to the Timorese capital, Dili, by the European ''troika,'' of
past, present and upcoming European Union presidents, announced by British Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook in Jakarta. 

The visit was welcomed in principle by both Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and by
Timorese resistance spokesman Jose Ramos-Horta. 

Ramos-Horta, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner along with the bishop of Dili Carlos Felipe
Ximenes Belo, expressed hope the visit would allow the European ambassadors to assess the need
for food aid in the drought-stricken province. 

Ramos-Horta said recently he feared thousands faced famine in East Timor and asked the United
Nations and the European Union to provide emergency aid. 

In recent weeks, human rights organisations have also said repression, denounced by the US State
Department in its annual report, is continuing. 

In the latest confirmed incident in January, four young Timorese were kidnapped by armed men,
thought to be linked to the Indonesian army, in Bonomaro in the East. They were found floating in a
river after being shot. 

Four of their comrades, taken in similar circumstances, are still missing two months later. (AFP)