The New York Times

Tuesday, September 14, 1999

An Effective Force for East Timor

"We cannot wait any longer," Indonesia's President, B. J. Habibie, said on Sunday. "We have to stop the suffering and mourning immediately." With those words, Mr. Habibie bowed to world opinion and agreed to allow international peacekeepers into East Timor. But important questions remain about when -- and with what powers -- the force will go in. The international community needs to maintain political and financial pressure on Indonesia to accept a force large and powerful enough to protect East Timor's people -- and to do so immediately, before thousands more are killed.

Militias created and backed by Indonesia's military have been rampaging in East Timor for months, but the violence dramatically worsened after an Aug. 30 vote that overwhelmingly supported independence for the disputed province, which Indonesia invaded and swallowed in 1975. The militias have set fire to much of the territory and killed perhaps thousands of people, many of them the pro-independence intelligentsia. Others have been rounded up and taken to West Timor, and tens of thousands have fled to the mountains, where they are in danger of starving.

Mr. Habibie's announcement that he would accept an international force took considerable political courage, as the idea is hugely unpopular with Indonesians and especially with its powerful military establishment. He agreed after several countries began to cut off joint training exercises, as well as military aid and sales, and important donors and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank suggested that they would condition further assistance on Indonesia's performance in East Timor.

The peacekeeping force, which requires the blessing of the United Nations Security Council, would be organized and led by Australia. Australian officials say they will provide about 4,500 of the anticipated 7,000 troops needed if Indonesia's military in East Timor is cooperative. They say they can get 2,000 troops to East Timor within 72 hours of United Nations approval.

President Clinton says that Washington does not anticipate providing ground troops for the mission, but that American support forces would assist with logistics, intelligence, airlift and coordination. Australia has maintained that American expertise is needed for these tasks, and this is an appropriate role for the United States.

Yesterday the Security Council met to hear a chilling report from a delegation of U.N. ambassadors that had just returned from East Timor, and to begin to negotiate the details of the force. Happily, Indonesia has retreated from earlier statements that the unit should contain only Asians. The world needs to keep up the economic and diplomatic pressure to convince Mr. Habibie that the force must be able to detain militia members or Indonesian soldiers who terrorize the population or menace peacekeepers.

President Habibie has already agreed to a commission to look into human rights violations. Those investigators must be able to work freely. Most crucial, Mr. Habibie cannot be permitted to stall. There will soon be nothing left of East Timor to save.