Worries over E Timor violence

Worries over E Timor violence

3,000 UN peacekeepers are still in East Timor

A recent rise in violence and militia activity in East Timor has prompted United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to call for a delay in the phased withdrawal of UN peacekeepers from the fledgling nation.

The UN Mission of Support in East Timor has warned that well-trained militia groups pose a "real threat" to security in parts of the country.

Despite the fanfare that greeted the country's independence from Indonesia last May, the world's newest nation has been beset by security problems.

Hundreds of UN troops have recently been deployed to hunt down a group which attacked a bus, killing two civilians, on 24 February in the Maliana district bordering West Timor.

We cannot continue to hear this broken record, citing Indonesia as a villain

Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa

Other recent incidents include an attack in January, when an armed gang killed six people in Atsabe district, and a riot in December in Dili which left two dead and destroyed dozens of buildings.

Many in East Timor blame pro-Indonesian rebels for the attacks - the same rebels who were behind 1999 violence triggered by the overwhelming East Timorese vote for independence.

East Timor's ambassador to the UN, Luis Guterres, told the BBC: "It is very clear from our point of view that these infiltrations came from Indonesia."

He said that some of the rebels captured after recent attacks had confessed to being armed by soldiers in the Indonesian army.

But Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa insisted his country was not to blame.

"We have dealt with East Timor's independence in as rational and forward-looking manner as we could," he told the BBC's World Today programme.

"We cannot continue to hear this broken record, citing Indonesia as a villain... just to bring us down."

He said that the insurgents could well have come from inside East Timor itself, not from across the border in the Indonesian province of West Timor.

"It is a bit too convenient to refer to the sources of the disturbances as being cross-border ones," he said.

"It is for the East Timorese themselves to put their house in order."