The New York Times

Saturday, September 11, 1999

Principles in the Balkans, but Not in East Timor?

By Stanley Hoffmann

(Stanley Hoffmann, a university professor at Harvard, teaches international relations.)

CAMBRIDGE Mass. - In Kosovo, the United States and its allies had to choose between two important norms of international relations: respecting a state's sovereignty and protecting human rights. When they chose to stand for the latter principle, and to use force on its behalf, it seemed that a new standard was being established at last - that no state was allowed to commit gross human rights violations even on its own territory, and that those who were guilty of having ordered them and carried them out could he indicted as criminals.

Now we seem to be backpedaling from that principle, and in a country where the sovereignty issue shouldn't hold us back at all.

In East Timor, where rampaging militias supported by elements of the Indonesian Army are terrorizing the

population, there's no conflict between the fundamental principles of human rights and a nation's self- determination. Indonesia is an illegal occupier of East Timor, not a legal sovereign.

Its annexation of the island more than 20 years ago has never been recognized by the international community. Behaving as if we need Indonesia's consent to protect the East Timorese discredits the United Nations and its leading member nations, whose commitment to human

rights now looks scandalously selective.

Whatever the strategic importance of East Timor, the symbolic significance of allowing militias to murder civilians and to nullify the results of a United Nations-sponsored referendum on independence cannot be overestimated. The withdrawal of most United Nations personnel from East Timor evokes disturbing echoes of Srebrenica, the Bosnian town where United Nations

peacekeepers stood by while thousands of civilians were massacred.

Such violations cry out for a response. Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which deals with international peace and security, permits the Security Council to make decisions, not just recommendations. And the Security Council is not likely to be paralyzed by a Russian or a Chinese veto as it could have been in Kosovo; neither country has much sympathy for a military regime that 34 years ago massacred hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese.

Indonesia is not, as Russia is in its war against Dagestani rebels in the Caucasus or as China is in oppressing Tibet, a major power capable of turning any external military intervention into anything beyond a regional war. It's a bankrupt state with a weak President, shaky and incomplete democratic institutions and a repressive military. And the West has supported Indonesia for far too long for reasons of economic interest and obsolete cold war balancing.

The Clinton Administration, which once defined its mission in foreign affairs as the spread of democracy,

has responded in a weak, dilatory manner by doing no more than suggesting a Security Council resolution asking Indonesia to accept an international force. Instead, it should take the initiative not by sending ground forces, but by rallying the Security Council and getting together a collective force to keep the peace and enforce the results of the referendum - with or without Indonesia's

consent.

What this crisis points to once again is the need for regional organizations - like the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum - to take over in emergencies like this one and put together a common force before it's too late. At the same time, the United Nations must call on its members to provide men, women and materiel for the kind of volunteer army-in-readiness that Sir Brian Urquhart wisely called for several years ago.

The 21st century will be full of ethnic conflicts and disintegrating states. It will not be possible to prevent, stop or resolve all of them, but cases of extraordinary quasi-genocidal violence like Kosovo and East Timor need to be considered as in-herently dangerous for international peace and security, and intolerable

on both ethical and prudential grounds.