By Judy Aita ,Washington File United Nations Correspondent
United Nations -- The United States remains deeply concerned about the situation in West Timor refugee camps and the failure to disarm anti-independence militia, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said October 12.
Holbrooke, the chief U.S. envoy to the United Nations, said that none of the U.S. concerns about the situation in West Timor refugee camps containing about 120,000 refugees "have disappeared and nor would I even say they have abated."
Holbrooke talked with journalists outside the Security Council after he spoke with Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihad in the morning of October 12. The Indonesian foreign minister was scheduled to hold a private meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council later in the day.
The U.S. ambassador said that in his private meeting with Shihad he expressed appreciation that Eurico Guterres had been arrested and detained. Guterres, the leader of one of the most notorious of the anti-independence militias, is thought responsible for much of the violence following East Timor's independence vote in August 1999.
Holbrooke also said that he expected the Indonesians to accept a Security Council Mission to the region sometime in mid-November "which is fine with us."
Nevertheless, the ambassador said, the United States remains "deeply concerned about the situation in the West Timor camps. We remain concerned at the arming of the militia. None of our concerns have disappeared, nor would I even say they have abated."
"However, I think we should recognize that the Indonesian government is acting, insofar as the United Nations side of the ledger goes, in the direction they said they would be moving," the ambassador said.
The arrest of anti-independence militia leader Guterres for attempting to thwart the disarmament of militia groups in West Timor, Holbrooke said, is "another important action in the right direction."
But the ambassador added that he believes that Guterres' arrest is related to the fact that members of the Security Council, especially the United States, are rethinking their decision earlier this year not to set up a war crimes tribunal.
"We all have to accept the fact that (the arrest) is a positive step, but it is not in any way definitive," the ambassador said.
Asked about the situation in the West Timor refugee camps where U.N. aid workers were withdrawn after several were killed by militia in the past few months, Holbrooke said that "the Indonesian Government has repeatedly said that people who do not wish to return to East Timor will be given assistance in settling on other islands but they have never moved anyone in any significant numbers off the island of Timor. That is part of the problem."
A decision to send aid workers back into refugee camps in West Timor "is a decision to put the bravest people in world -- unarmed civilian refugee workers, people who are risking their lives to help other people -- at risk of losing their own lives," the ambassador said.
"I cannot even begin to judge whether they should be sent back in," he said. "I want those people back in the camps, but I don't want to see more United Nations personnel killed. We have at least five deaths (of aid workers) in East and West Timor in the last eight weeks."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)