Indonesia/Riady - Sweet Coal

Indonesian military training under JCET while IMET banned.

AP Irwan Firdaus "Steps to revive Indonesia's plummeting economy have failed to stem the country's worst crisis in 30 years, President B.J. Habibie told a congress of the ruling Golkar party yesterday. He said the yearlong financial slump that has put millions out of work shows no sign of abating..Many fear more social unrest as the crisis deepens."

Reform Party News 7/7/98 "Newly declassified documents from the hidden files of former Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown show that Brown was directly involved in U.S. arms exports to Asia. The documents were recently obtained from the Department of Commerce using the Freedom of Information Act. The new documents from Brown's files, labeled simply "DEFENSE TRADE ADVOCACY INDONESIA", provide a detailed picture of U.S. weapons sales to the far east during the 1994 APEC conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.."

Washington Times 8/17-23/98 Editorial "At the rate the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is refunding illegal donations that arrived from Indonesia during the 1996 presidential campaign, the International Monetary Fund will soon have to include the DNC among the organizations involved in the international economic bailout of Indonesia. The DNC seems to have more refunds to make. Two weeks ago, investigators for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee revealed that another $200,000, which originated in Indonesia in the form of travelers checks issued by a bank formerly controlled by the Riady family, made its way stateside in 1996, where much of the money was laundered into illegal contributions to the DNC or used as payments and "gifts" to party contributors and fund-raisers..It should be noted that the matter involving the $25,000 laundered through Mr. Ho came to light only because a committee investigator, not the Justice Department's task force, initiated contact with Mr. Ho last month, though the Justice Department knew of the travelers checks for several months.."

Washington Times Adam Entous 8/20/98 Reuters "Corrupt Indonesian officials may have pocketed or diverted more than 20 percent of World Bank development funds to the world's fourth most populous country, according to an internal World Bank document from 1997. The World Bank, which is investigating separate reports of corruption among its own staff, confirmed the contents of the year-old Indonesian memorandum yesterday

WorldNetDaily, Softwar 7/14/98 July 14, 1998 Charles Smith, Softwar "… The November, 1994 Commerce Department advocacy document shows the Indonesian Paiton project encountered difficulties with financing because the Asian Development Bank (ADB) knew it also contained a Suharto family kick-back. Suharto's son-in-law, according to the U.S. government advocacy document, was known to be a share holder in P.T. Batu. "Ambassador Barry stated that the project is facing two problems," noted Commerce officials on the Paiton project status document dated, November 1, 1994. "(i) the ADB financing may cave in and (ii) EXIM financing. Regarding ADB, technical questions have been satisfied, but ADB is skiddish about involvement of Indonesia's first family (a minority shareholder is married to Pres. Suharto's daughter)."…. Commerce documents show that Lippo business partner Mission Energy (now named Edison Mission Energy) received strong Clinton administration support for the Paiton project. One 1994 document, obtained by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, noted the Indonesian government-backed project had "state-of-the-art emissions-control technology... by using low-sulfur Indonesian coal, the project will be one of the cleanest, most efficient coal-fired facilities in the world." Please note the Paiton power plant was designed to burn "low-sulfur Indonesian coal". In 1996 President Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, placing off-limits the world's largest deposit of low-sulfur coal. The Lippo group is the primary owner of the only other supply of low-sulfur coal in the world, located in Indonesia. Clinton's move left the only remaining low-sulfur coal supply in Lippo hands, creating a Riady monopoly. The move vastly increased the dollar value of Riady's low-sulfur coal reserves in a single stroke of Clinton's pen. The Indonesian coal reserves, co-incidentally, just happen to be located close to the U.S. taxpayer backed Paiton power plant. The questionable parts of the Paiton project are not only centered around coal from Riady. For example, Senator Tom Harkin has a close connection. It just happens that Ruth Harkin, Sen. Harkin's wife, was also 1994 head of the U.S. Government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a major Paiton financial backer. Ms. Harkin approved the OPIC financing for Paiton in 1994. Harkin, a former partner in the law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, is a close Clinton friend. Harkin's partnership in the powerful D.C. based law firm also included other Clinton friends Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan…."

Fox Newswire 3/5/99 Reuters Freeper marshmallow "…Thousands of Muslims rallied in Jakarta Friday to condemn communal bloodshed in Ambon that has killed more than 200, with hundreds signing up to rush to the island to join a holy war against Christians…"

Foxnews 3/27/99 Freeper vitolins "…Fresh ethnic violence on the island of Borneo has left around 15 people dead and 180 houses torched, the Media Indonesia newspaper said Saturday…."

International Herald Tribune 4/29/99 José Ramos-Horta "...There has been a flurry of high-minded rhetoric from NATO leaders. British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the April 19 international edition of Newsweek: ''We need to enter a new millennium where dictators know that they cannot get away with ethnic cleansing or repress their peoples with impunity. In this conflict we are fighting ... for a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated.'' Mr. Blair was referring to Kosovo and Serbia, not to East Timor and Indonesia. Yet in East Timor, paramilitary groups organized and armed by the Indonesian military have killed scores of defenseless civilians in recent weeks. It is no surprise that Mr. Blair does not direct such lofty proclamations at East Timor. His Labour government has granted more weapons export licenses to the Indonesian military than the previous Conservative government. The NATO allies demand complete Serbian troop withdrawal from Kosovo and an international military presence. Britain refuses to demand an Indonesian troop withdrawal from East Timor (for which Portugal remains the administering authority under international law) despite the fact that the territory is illegally occupied. Indonesia invaded it in 1975 and annexed it in 1976, an act never recognized by the United Nations.NATO's leaders threaten senior Serbian officials with a war crimes tribunal. For East Timor, where massacres and ethnic cleansing have been going on for 23 years, there are no suggestions of such a tribunal for Indonesia's military leaders, many of whom have received training in NATO countries. Indonesia receives mild rebukes and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry and billions of dollars in loans and grants...."

STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update 5/10/99 Freeper Brian Mosely"...Indonesia's coming presidential elections have created enormous social and political tension domestically, and they have significant strategic implications. With U.S.-Chinese relations at their lowest point in years, the possibility of confrontation over Indonesia is substantial. Indonesia is vital strategically, sitting astride the trade routes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Everything from Japanese oil supplies, to Singapore's banking system and U.S. power projection in the Persian Gulf, are at risk in an Indonesian crisis. The crisis is also an opportunity for China to do what Russia did in Yugoslavia: make it clear to the United States and the region that China cannot be excluded from the regional dynamic and that the U.S. does not have the ability, without Chinese cooperation, to act in Asia. Everything is in place for a crisis that could dwarf Kosovo in global significance...."

BBC News 6/7/99 "....The people of Indonesia have begun voting in a general election which will lead to the creation of the world's third-largest democracy. President BJ Habibie has called for a large turn-out in the vote - the first free general election for more than 40 years. But there is still concern over possible violence in areas of the country where ethnic, religious and separatist conflicts have claimed hundreds of lives already this year. Matt Frei reports on the election scene from Jakarta Ahead of the vote, President Habibie said that the elections marked the awakening of democracy in Indonesia and that a democratic culture could only be built by a nation capable of restraint. He said Indonesia should be a model of how a big nation could free itself from the "trap of authoritarianism". ...."

www.stratfor.com 5/10/99 "....Indonesia's coming presidential elections have created enormous social and political tension domestically, and they have significant strategic implications. With U.S.-Chinese relations at their lowest point in years, the possibility of confrontation over Indonesia is substantial. Indonesia is vital strategically, sitting astride the trade routes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Everything from Japanese oil supplies, to Singapore's banking system and U.S. power projection in the Persian Gulf, are at risk in an Indonesian crisis. The crisis is also an opportunity for China to do what Russia did in Yugoslavia: make it clear to the United States and the region that China cannot be excluded from the regional dynamic and that the U.S. does not have the ability, without Chinese cooperation, to act in Asia. Everything is in place for a crisis that could dwarf Kosovo in global significance...."

Associated Press 6/19/99 "….The scheduled arrival today of the first U.N. police advisers to East Timor, due to keep the peace for an Aug. 8 independence referendum, has been delayed for several days. David Wimhurst, spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), said he was informed late Friday that the 38 advisers would not fly in from Darwin, Australia, until early next week. The delay was believed to have been caused by pilot scheduling difficulties, he said. Overall, 278 U.N. officers are to oversee the Indonesian police contingent responsible for maintaining law and order for the referendum that will let East Timorese choose independence or autonomy within Indonesia. Fighting in East Timor between militias in favor of and opposed to independence has increased with the approach the referendum…."

SCMP 6/30/99 "...Militia mob stones UN poll post AGENCIES in Dili and Jakarta A mob of about 100 pro-Indonesian militia stoned a United Nations post in East Timor yesterday, injuring several people including a district electoral officer. It was the first violence against international officials supervising the planned August referendum on the troubled territory's future. The UN Assistance Mission in East Timor (Unamet) said in a statement: "One Unamet staff member, a woman district electoral officer of South African nationality, suffered a minor injury to her leg and several East Timorese suffered head and other injuries."..."

Fox newswire 7/31/99 "...The United States is considering sending Marines to serve as U.N. peacekeepers in East Timor, an Australian newspaper said Sunday. The Sunday Age newspaper quoted U.S. defense strategists as saying Washington had considered the commitment of Marines to a U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed before or after East Timor votes on whether to break from Indonesia on August 30...."

WorldNet Daily 8/3/99 Charles Smith "... Indonesians are struggling to pay American power producers for electricity that is not needed, and which they cannot afford. According to newly released documents from the U.S. Commerce Department, 26 U.S.-sponsored electric power projects are on the block because the Indonesian state power company, PLN, is bankrupt. The crown jewel of electricity projects in Indonesia is the huge Mission Energy/GE PAITON coal-fired electric plant in East Java. In 1994, Mission Energy, part of the California Edison power consortium, put great faith in the Clinton administration and Ron Brown to reach Indonesian dictator Suharto. Mission CEO John Bryson even wrote Brown, thanking him for the overwhelming efforts from 1994 through 1995 to get the Indonesians to buy their Paiton bid. Paiton was billed as the first "private" electric plant in Indonesia. However, "private" ownership in Indonesia means owned and operated by the Suharto "First Family." The Indonesian company that owns, operates and fuels the Paiton plant under a 30 year, no cut contract is PT Batu Hitam Perkasa, owned by Suharto's daughter, Titek Prabowo and her brother-in-law, Hashim Djojohadikusumo. According to the Commerce Department, ".75%" of the Paiton project was reserved for Suharto's daughter Prabowo. Prabowo's cut amounted to an instant $15 million. Her kickback, along with a cut for "brother-in-law" Hashim and various other Suharto relatives was provided up front, in cash, in the form of a $50 million loan. The $50 million loan was to be paid back by the profits (dividends) returned from the $2.6 billion Paiton project. Since there are no profits, there is no pay back. According to the 1994 Commerce Department documents, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was "skittish" about providing a $50 million bribe to the Suharto family from the U.S. taxpayers. The reluctance to participate in an illegal pay-off, led GE and Mission Energy to seek Clinton help. .....Obviously asking questions would not be good for any project with a built-in $50 million kickback for the local dictator. In 1999, the entire $2.6 billion dollar project is on the brink of failure. The corrupt deals with the former dictator of Indonesia are collapsing faster than the Indonesian economy. The good citizens of Indonesia have learned of the "First Family" take-over of their national resources and they do not approve...."

House of Representatives 4/15/97 Rep Cunningham "...In 1992, Candidate Clinton described as unconscionable Indonesia's treatment of the East Timorese, 200,000 of whom had perished since Indonesia had annexed East Timor 20 years ago. The administration even supported the United Nations resolution criticizing Indonesia's East Timor policy. Around the same time, Mark Grobymer, an Arkansas lawyer who golfs with Mr. Clinton, joined Mr. Huang and Mr. Riady on a trip to East Timor. In April the three men visited Mr. Clinton, and, guess what? The President reversed his position. Human rights activists claimed the administration's concern for Timor would be looked into. John Huang helped raise $425,000 from an Indonesian couple whose primary bread earner was as a landscaper. When it was looked into, and that checks were made concurrently by the same source and it was brought up to the press, the DNC returned the money...."

House of Representatives 4/15/97 Rep Cunningham "...Mr. Huang's message slips from the Commerce Department also showed calls from one Chinese Embassy official in February 1995 and three calls from the Embassy's commercial minister in June and August of that year. Mr. Huang's desk calendar entries had three meetings scheduled with Chinese Government officials. He attended policy breakfasts at the Chinese Embassy in October 1995 and visited the Indonesian Embassy on October 11, 1995. In March, President Clinton, after this meeting in Indonesia by Mr. Huang, in March 1996, President Clinton reversed a key administrative policy on immigration following a $1.1 million Asian fund-raising dinner, the most successful Asian-American political fund-raiser in United States history. Held the previous month and organized by, who else? John Huang, a former employee of Lippo...."

House of Representatives 4/15/97 Rep Cunningham "...President Clinton had previously opposed the practice of allowing foreign-born siblings of naturalized U.S. citizens to come to the United States, based on recommendations of a commission he appointed himself, and affirmed his desire to halt immigration in an early 1996 letter to the Speaker of the House. But in March 1996, President Clinton made a last-minute about-face, after the Indonesian meeting with Mr. Huang and after the fund-raising of $1.1 million, and reversed his position and put top priority recommendations made in a strongly worded John Huang memorandum to Bill Clinton. And then, and now former, Senator Alan Simpson said: I never in 18 years in Congress, and I quote, saw an issue that shifted so fast and so hard...."

FoxNews 8/8/99 AP "...A local journalist investigating corruption was found dead in Aceh, one of Indonesia's troubled provinces, a newspaper reported Sunday. The body of Supriadi, 34, a reporter for Medan Pos, a daily newspaper in neighboring North Sumatra province, was discovered Thursday in an irrigation project in North Aceh, Jakarta's Kompas newspaper reported....."

The Guardian (UK) 4/12/99 Derek Brown "..."The youngest son of former Indonesian President Suharto was in court today (above), smiling and waving to supporters as he faced multi-million pound corruption charges. In East Timor, meanwhile, bloodthirsty pro-government militiamen paraded through the capital calling for all-out war against secessionist guerrillas. The two events, small in themselves, are ominous storm-signals. Indonesia, raddled by graft and shaken by ugly violence, is in grave danger of falling apart. ..."

The Guardian (UK) 4/28/99 John Aglionby "...While the West blusters self-righteously in the Balkans, the situation in East Timor is being allowed to deteriorate. Today foreign office minister Derek Fatchett visits East Timor, the former Portuguese colony the Indonesian government invaded in 1975. He's part of a diplomatic flurry. Yesterday the Australian PM, John Howard, saw Indonesian president BJ Habibie; last week it was the foreign minister of Portugal, the colonial power until the annexation -- which has never been recognised by the United Nations...."

Stratfor 5/10/99 "...Indonesia's coming presidential elections have created enormous social and political tension domestically, and they have significant strategic implications. With US-Chinese relations at their lowest point in years, the possibility of confrontation over Indonesia is substantial. Indonesia is vital strategically, sitting astride the trade routes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Everything from Japanese oil supplies, to Singapore's banking system and US power projection in the Persian Gulf, are at risk in an Indonesian crisis. The crisis is also an opportunity for China to do what Russia did in Yugoslavia: make it clear to the United States and the region that China cannot be excluded from the regional dynamic and that the US does not have the ability, without Chinese cooperation, to act in Asia. Everything is in place for a crisis that could dwarf Kosovo in global significance...."

The Guardian (UK) 6/1/99 John Pilger "...The indictment of Milosevic is good news. The crimes he and his gang have committed make him a first class war criminal. However, try as he may, he has yet to approach the record set by the Indonesian dictator Suharto. According to a study commissioned by the Australian Parliament, "at least" 200,000 East Timorese have died as a direct result of the Indonesian invasion and occupation. That is a third of the population or, proportionally, more people than were killed by Pol Pot in Cambodia. When I travelled through the Matabean mountains of East Timor, beneath endless silhouettes of black crosses etched against the sky, I failed to meet a single family that grieved for fewer than five immediate members. Now the slaughter that began with the invasion 23 years ago has returned. In the tumultuous aftermath of Suharto's forced resignation last year, the new regime headed by his stooge, BJ Habibie, offered the East Timorese a vote on autonomy within Indonesia or independence. What Habibie failed to spell out was that real power remained with the army that Suharto built as a force for colonial expansion and domestic oppression and which has devoted itself to destroying the prospect of a free vote set by the UN for August 8.

While the army chief, General Wiranto, gives bogus public support to the "peace process", there is abundant evidence that his officers train, arm and pay death squads to murder and intimidate anyone associated with the independence movement. "Just as it seemed the next generation might not be born in tears," wrote a friend from the capital, Dili, "hope is being snatched away from us." And the Blair government, those noted fighters for "humanitarian values" and against "repressive governments" are up to their necks in it. Britain is the biggest supplier of weapons to the Indonesian military. Everything from surface to air missiles, to anti-riot vehicles and cluster bombs, comes from Britain...."

Washington Post 8/13/99 Keith Richburg "...Just as Indonesia's battered economy was beginning to show signs of recovery, its currency has taken a surprising plunge, reviving the specter of last year's currency collapse and illustrating how political uncertainty continues to control the direction of the financial markets. A corruption scandal at the heart of the country's banking system and fresh violence in the outlying provinces combined today to drive the value of the currency, the rupiah, down ..."

Pacific Stars And Stripes 8/15/99 Jan Wesner Childs "...Nearly 1,500 U.S. Marines and sailors are in Indonesia this week to wrap up CARAT 99, an annual training exercise with several Southeast Asian countries. U.S. government and military officials said the training was not in response to the religious and political violence that has wracked parts of Indonesia for the past year, nor to an upcoming independence vote on the Indonesian island of East Timor. The vote is expected to prompt violence and rioting, and some news reports have speculated the U.S. military could form a peacekeeping force in East Timor...."

International Herald Tribune 8/25/99 Robert Levine "…The trouble with American foreign policy, as well as the parallel policies of other advanced nations, is that they are not run by experts. So say the experts; if their advice is not followed, the future is dark indeed. ''If the United States and other international actors É fail,'' writes a columnist, ''there is little hope that the world will be able to develop the approaches necessary to É reduce the risks of conflicts like those over Dagestan in Russia, Tibet in China, Kurdistan in Turkey and Kashmir in India,'' which present ''the greatest threat to international peace and security in the next decade.'' His immediate concern is separatism in Indonesia, for which he recommends that the United States and others provide economic incentives to encourage the central government to allow East Timor and other outlying provinces ''to decide their own political fates,'' while the United Nations convinces these provinces to decide not to secede…."

Syndney Morning Herald 8/23/99 Lindsay Murdoch "…Armed militias massing in East Timor near the western border plan to go to war to stop the territory they hold becoming independent, United Nations officials have warned. The officials told visiting US politicians in the town of Maliana at the weekend that the ballot to decide East Timor's future, scheduled for next Monday, should be called off in the militia-dominated district because "too many people will die". …"

New York Times 8/29/99 Seth Mydan "…After 24 years of bloodshed and fear, East Timor has reached its moment of truth, a referendum on Monday that could lead it into a new era of freedom and reconciliation or one of even fiercer civil war. The referendum offers a choice between independence or an autonomous relationship with Indonesia, which invaded this former Portuguese colony in 1975 and has fought against separatist rebels ever since. But as the vote has drawn near, what should have been an election campaign in this tiny, remote territory has been instead a campaign of terror by brutal, rag-tag militias that oppose independence…."

AP/Fox Web site 8/28/99 "…President Clinton put Indonesia on notice that the country risks international consequences if violence accompanies a referendum on self-rule in East Timor, an administration spokesman said Saturday. "We expect a free, fair and credible election,'' National Security Council spokesman David Leavy said. Residents of the former Portuguese colony will vote Monday on whether to become an independent nation or an autonomous region within Indonesia, which annexed East Timor in 1976. …"

Reuters 9/1/99 Terry Friel "… Pro-Jakarta militiamen, allowed free rein by Indonesian police, went on the rampage Wednesday firing shots and clashing with pro-independence supporters around the U.N. headquarters in East Timor. Witnesses said at least five people died in the latest violence, which turned the nerve center of the United Nations operation in East Timor into chaos, with about 400 refugees, U.N. staff and journalists crowding into the compound. Just outside the U.N. gates, pro-Indonesian militiamen hacked a man to death with machetes and some witnesses said the final death toll could be much higher than five…."

Associated Press 9/1/99 SLOBODAN LEKIC "…Armed with homemade guns, rifles and machetes, hundreds of pro-Indonesia militiamen clashed with rock-throwing independence supporters Wednesday outside U.N. headquarters in East Timor. One teen-ager was stabbed and bludgeoned to death. The violence came on the same day ballots from a historic referendum on the territory's future were being counted. The militiamen, some wearing red-and-white headbands in Indonesia's national colors, shot and mutilated a 19-year-old at the gates of the U.N. compound, killing him…."

Washington Post 8/30/99 Keith Richburg "…After 300 years of Portuguese rule and a quarter century under Indonesian military occupation, the people of East Timor were finally allowed to vote today on their future. And most analysts believe that if voters are not scared away by militia violence, they will choose to become an independent nation. But the threat of violence hung over the territory, despite a peace agreement announced Sunday between the pro-independence guerrillas, known as Falintil, and the heavily armed militias, which have weapons and support from some in the Indonesian military who oppose East Timor's separation….."

IPS 8/30/99 Kafil Yamin "…Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese went to the polls today, fearful of violence but determined to take part in a historic vote on their future after 24 years of Indonesian rule. Thousands of voters clutching their registration papers queued up under the heat in every corner of the capital Dili -- in sharp contrast to the scenes of terror and intimidation that persisted here due to the pro-Indonesia militias until a few days ago…."

AFP 8/25/99 "…A top International Monetary Fund (IMF) official warned Wednesday of a "disaster scenario" for the Indonesian economy if the Bank Bali scandal is not properly handled. The scandal, revolving around a huge "commission" payment by the bank to a high-ranking ruling-party figure, has dented investor confidence in Indonesia's financial reform drive. …"

Reuters 8/31/99 "…Pro-Indonesia East Timorese said on Tuesday this week's historic referendum on independence was ``garbage'' and warned it would sow the seeds of new conflict in the troubled territory. The United Front for East Timor Autonomy said those in favour of the territory remaining within Indonesia believed the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) was biased and supported independence. ``Most of the pro-integration supporters have come to the conclusion that UNAMET is really encouraging and backing the people of East Timor to break East Timor away from Indonesia,'' the group said in a statement. …"

Associated Press 8/31/99 Geoff Spencer "…Angry militiamen blocked roads and stopped separatists from boarding planes and ferries out of East Timor's capital today, amid expectations that the Indonesian loyalists lost a vote on the troubled territory's future. Hundreds of machete-wielding, gun-toting militia members returned to the streets, menacing villages and parts of the capital, Dili, and raising fears that they might launch a new campaign of terror against those who favor independence. Pro-Jakarta militias have been battling separatists for decades in the impoverished region, which Indonesia invaded in 1975, shortly after Portugal pulled out as colonial ruler. The militias are supported by elements of the Indonesian military, which have business interests in the province. The militias say they want to stop independence leaders from leaving to avoid a political vacuum that could plunge the territory into chaos, similar to what followed Portuguese withdrawal…."

Reuters 9/8/99 Andrew Huddart "...Pressure mounted on Indonesia on Wednesday to end the violence in East Timor as foreign ministers held a flurry of bilateral talks in New Zealand ahead of an emergency meeting on the crisis on Thursday. ``The government of Indonesia gave the international community a commitment that they would maintain security throughout the independence process,'' British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told reporters at Auckland airport. ``We want to explore whether the government of Indonesia is capable of achieving those commitments..."

Associated Press 9/8/99 David Briscoe "...Defense Secretary William Cohen said today the United States has no plans to contribute troops to any peacekeeping force for Indonesia. Cohen, responding bluntly to questions from reporters on the Pentagon lawn, said it was up to the Indonesian government and the international community to respond to the growing post-election violence in East Timor. ``The United States is not planning an insertion of any peacekeeping forces,'' Cohen said. He called upon the Indonesian government to act ``swiftly and effectively'' to quell violence caused by anti-independence militia groups defying the vote by East Timorese to become an independent nation. ``The government of Indonesia is responsible for bringing order and peace to East Timor,'' Cohen said. ...."

New York Times 9/8/99 Barbara Crossette "…As many as 200,000 people, nearly a quarter of East Timor's population, have been driven from their homes within the last four days by militias opposed to independence for the territory, the secretary-general's spokesman said here on Tuesday. Many displaced people who had sought refuge in churches and aid agencies are being rounded up and forcibly moved across the border to Indonesian West Timor, and thousands of others have fled into hills and forests, said Fred Eckhard, the spokesman, citing a report from the U.N. mission in East Timor. Its figures are based on reports from refugees, the few remaining journalists (who say the capital city seems all but deserted), departing aid agencies, church officials and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which until Tuesday had officials on the border with West Timor. ….With most foreigners evacuated from East Timor and the remaining 335 U.N. staff trapped in a compound in Dili, the capital, virtually all relief aid has ended, almost no food is available for emergency distribution, and the fate of many refugees is unknown. U.N. officials in East Timor say they face an emergency "with potential catastrophic consequences." …."

The Reagan Information Interchange 9/7/99 Mary Mostert "….In May of 1995 at a press conference, President Clinton was asked : Q Mr. President, Human rights sources are -- how do you plan to approach the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia, sir? Could you elaborate on that -- how do you plan to approach the problem of East Timor? THE PRESIDENT: I don't want to talk about it today. In fact, over the years President Clinton NEVER seemed to want to actually talk about the human rights violations of his friends and campaign finance supporters in Indonesia. Now, as thousands flee from a campaign of violence by Indonesian created militias and, it now appears, the Indonesian army itself, the man who would have us believe he "took action" to stop Slobodan Milosevic from "ethnically cleansing" Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia, is doing nothing to stop genocide in East Timor….. "I talked to Prime Minister Howard today. I'm going to talk to Secretary General Annan later today and we will do what we can," Clinton said during a press conference at a Virginia elementary school. And what, exactly is Clinton's idea of "doing all he can" to halt the Indonesian government's version of a final solution to the East Timor vote for independence after 24 years of Indonesian rule that already resulted in the death of at least one third of the East Timor Christians? Over 200,000 people have died from Indonesian Army killings or Indonesian government induced famine since Suharto's illegal invasion of the area in 1975…."

The Reagan Information Interchange 9/7/99 Mary Mostert "….The day after the election, Suharto's spokesman told Reuters that Indonesia "expected good bilateral relations with the United States to continue following the re-election of President Bill Clinton." Will Clinton's incredible efforts to help the Riady family change merely because the Indonesian Muslims are trying their best to wipe out the East Timorese Christians. Probably not. Remember, in September 1996, just before the election, Clinton removing a major source of competition for the Riady family's low-sulfur coal mines by making sure a large American source of low-sulfur coal in Utah could not be mined? Even the Associated Press reported the connection between the Riady Family business interests and Clinton's inexplicable announcing the 1.7 million acre "monument" in Utah, after Clinton was safely elected. The report said, on December 26, 1996: "When President Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of Utah wilderness as a national monument, he dashed plans to tap a huge reserve of environment-friendly coal……. "A farm-trade publication and some politically conservative talk shows have raised questions in recent weeks about whether Clinton's decision might benefit Indonesia and its Lippo Group, a conglomerate at the center of a controversy over campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. "Lippo's founder, billionaire Mochtar Riady, his family members and associates have contributed heavily to Clinton and the Democrats. Lippo has business interests related to coal: One of its subsidiaries was involved in a now-dormant joint venture to run a coal-fueled power plant in China." …"

Stratfor 9/7/99 "…The East Timor situation has been simmering for decades, seemingly defying solution while having few consequences beyond the immediate tragedy. Put differently, East Timor appears to be a situation with moral significance but without strategic implications. To a great extent, this has been true in the generation since Indonesia seized East Timor during the collapse of the Portuguese empire. It is not true now. East Timor has substantial strategic significance…… Indonesia's significance is obvious. It lies astride the shipping lanes leading from the Pacific to the Indian oceans. Instability in Indonesia could easily lead to the closure or at least the increased insecurity of these critical waters. Ever since the collapse of Indonesia's economy, Indonesia as a whole has been drifting toward instability, and even anarchy. Anything that affects the condition of Indonesia is of fundamental strategic interest to the world…..In East Timor, the regime essentially decided to withdraw its military forces from a region. What the regime did not make clear was what was to happen to the economic and political interests of the forces in the region. The army's tremendous resistance to withdrawal stems from a simple fact: the army in East Timor has made its living, fed its families and enriched itself to the extent possible, precisely because they were in East Timor. Withdrawing forces from East Timor is not like deciding to move a division of American troops from Germany to Texas. It represents a direct assault on the livelihood of those forces. Now, if times were still flush, this would not necessarily represent such a terrible challenge. But times are not flush. They are awful. Wherever those forces are transferred, there will be not only additional mouths to feed, but also potentially direct competitors with forces already in the region. No one wants to see East Timor troops, tough and hungry, transferred to their region. No one sees a reason to withdraw at all, least of all the troops in East Timor…."

Associated Press 9/7/99 George Gedda "….The Clinton administration blamed Indonesian authorities Tuesday for some of the violence in East Timor and indicated a willingness to take part in an international peacekeeping force if one is formed. ``If that were necessary, we would obviously look at ways to be helpful,'' State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said. While showing little enthusiasm for a high-profile role in any such effort, Rubin suggested that diplomatic ties with Indonesia could be affected if Indonesia does not move more aggressively to restore order. ``The maintenance of productive relations between Indonesia and the United States and the international community at large depends upon Indonesia adopting a constructive attitude toward both ending the humanitarian disaster in East Timor and supporting the U.N.-administered process by which East Timor will become independent,'' he said….."

South China Morning Post 9/7/99 Vaudine England "….Indonesia's presidential frontrunner, Megawati Sukarnoputri, and party colleagues have covertly discussed the possibility of refusing to recognise East Timor's vote for independence, as calls for President Bacharuddin Habibie's resignation intensify. The moves show the fallout from the East Timor crisis is now directly affecting Indonesia's own political transition. Mr Habibie is in a tough position. It was he who chose to offer the ballot to East Timor which has resulted in what is still a shocking defeat to many in Jakarta. He now risks failing to please both the international community and his domestic supporters as he struggles to exert his authority….."

United Press International 9/6/99 "…The Clinton administration has hinted (Monday) that it would support an international peace force in East Timor if Indonesia agrees to such a presence. A State Department official who asked not to be identified said the United States believes Jakarta "must either take immediate steps to end the violence or invite the international community to be of assistance." …"

Australian Broadcasting Corp. 9/7/99 "…An Indonesian military spokesman says President BJ Habibie has imposed martial law in East Timor as violence there continues to worsen. Spokesman Brigadier General Sudradjat announced the President's decision, which he said was conveyed in a fax message sent to the territory's Military District Command before dawn today. Meanwhile, the United States has urged Indonesia to accept foreign intervention in East Timor. A US State Department officer says Indonesia is not fulfilling its commitment to provide order and security in the territory. He said the US was appalled by the violence there and called on Indonesia to restore order or invite the international community to be of assistance….."

UK Guardian 9/6/99 Mark Tran "….International condemnation of Indonesia escalated sharply today but Jakarta is resisting pressure to accept UN peacekeepers for East Timor until Indonesia's legislature ratifies the result of the referendum in November. New Zealand and Australia, close neighbours of East Timor, have been leading the criticism of the Indonesian military, accusing it of not doing enough to meet Indonesia's promise that it would maintain security in East Timor during and after the UN-sponsored vote on independence. Australia expressed outrage after its ambassador to Indonesia, John McCarthy, was shot at in his car in Dili, the East Timor capital. The envoy was not hurt. "We have to say we are absolutely outraged," Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer said. "For our ambassador to be shot at and for our consulate to be shot at is completely unacceptable." …."

Associated Press 9/6/99 Pete Yost "…The Clinton administration expressed alarm Monday about violence by Indonesian soldiers and police against citizens in East Timor, saying that Indonesia must quell the disorder or invite in outside forces to keep the peace. From his Camp David presidential retreat, President Clinton spoke with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has offered to send troops. Later in the day, Clinton spoke with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the violence in East Timor escalated….."

Reuters 9/6/99 Evelyn Leopold "… U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Indonesia on Monday to quell violence in East Timor or the world community would consider other steps to stop rampaging pro-Jakarta gangs in the territory. He said that if Indonesia, which has declared martial law in East Timor, failed to restore order within 48 hours, ``the international community will have to consider what other measures it can take to assist the Indonesia government.'' ``The present chaos in East Timor cannot be allowed to fester any longer,'' he said of militia members who have killed hundreds of people in response to an overwhelming vote on Aug. 30 in favour of independence from Indonesia. …."

STRATFOR 5/10/99 "…Indonesia's coming presidential elections have created enormous social and political tension domestically, and they have significant strategic implications. With US-Chinese relations at their lowest point in years, the possibility of confrontation over Indonesia is substantial. Indonesia is vital strategically, sitting astride the trade routes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Everything from Japanese oil supplies, to Singapore's banking system and US power projection in the Persian Gulf, are at risk in an Indonesian crisis. The crisis is also an opportunity for China to do what Russia did in Yugoslavia: make it clear to the United States and the region that China cannot be excluded from the regional dynamic and that the US does not have the ability, without Chinese cooperation, to act in Asia. Everything is in place for a crisis that could dwarf Kosovo in global significance…..More than anywhere else in Asia, Indonesia was socially and economically destabilized by the 1997 Asian meltdown. Indonesia has recovered less than almost any other Asian country, thus feeding the social and political crisis. The social and political crisis has, in turn, made recovery impossible. Indonesia has been caught in a downward spiral that could result in a major crack-up, triggered by a presidential campaign that is scheduled to begin on May 19 and culminate in elections on June 7. There are some real questions about whether those elections can be held without a blood bath and indeed, whether Indonesia can ultimately survive the political crisis surrounding the elections. Indonesia's Asian neighbors are deeply concerned. On May 7, both South Korea and Taiwan warned their nationals against traveling to Indonesia in the coming weeks. Today, Thailand joined in that warning…."

Jakarta Post 9/7/99 "… The euphoria of the East Timorese people over their victory in the UN-run ballot of Aug. 30 lasted only a few hours. They soon not only found themselves harassed by the pro-Indonesia groups, but saw their region plunged into unimaginable bloodshed. Thousands of people have had to seek refuge from the spiraling bloody attacks. The armed groups, who have reportedly been joined by troops of mysterious well-armed and well-trained men, refused to accept their loss, although Jakarta acknowledged the ballot as fair. The militias are so powerful that within a few days they were able to gain control most of the former Portuguese colony. This unholy war has paralyzed all government agencies and facilities and leaves no place for people to hide. Even Australian Ambassador John McCarthy was shot at in his car in Dili yesterday. He was lucky he was not hurt. But thousands of local people have been evacuated to the Indonesian part of the island and many buildings have been attacked. Some 6,000 East Timorese sought refuge in the residence of Bishop Carlos Belo in Dili. ….."

International Herald Tribune 8/30/99 Philip Bowring "….It is easy to be full of moral indignation if one forgets history and follows headlines. The West, seemingly ignorant of its own past, is in the grip of self-righteous moralizing that is further exacerbating the tragedies still unfolding in former Yugoslavia and formerly Portugese East Timor. Although they are separated by half a world, the Balkan and Timorese crises are both outcomes of the two main, contradictory impulses of 19th-century Western Europe: imperialist expansion abroad involving the creation of large political entities such as the Dutch East Indies, and encouragement of petty nationalism in Eastern and Southern Europe to hasten the demise of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Western imperial power is no more, but one of its better legacies, the consolidation of tribal entities and feudal states into viable modern ones, is under threat from the West's romantic passion for encouraging the pettiest of nationalisms, not least that of the 800,000 inhabitants of half a small island in an archipelago populated by 200 million….."

Bloomberg 9/6/99 Alistair Hammond "…As many as 200 people may have been killed by pro-Jakarta militiamen in East Timor since Saturday, according to the United Nations. After a four-fifths vote for independence from Indonesia was announced Saturday, the militia have been rampaging through the capital Dili unchecked, and are now effectively in control, UN spokesman David Wimhurst said. ``The militia have taken over East Timor,'' he said. The violence puts Indonesia's economic recovery at risk, as donor countries threaten to turn off the tap because of the disturbed situation ..."

The Indian Express, via News Plus 9/6/99 "…With widespread violence reported from East Timor, the Security Council has been summoned to meet in an emergency session to take stock of the situation. The Council has been recalled from weekend recess to meet at 1700 hours (0230 IST Monday) as reports spoke of more than 100 people dying in violence following East Timorese opting overwhelming for independence in a referendum early this week. But, it is unlikely that the Council would decide on any peace keeping operation, for several members are yet to be brought on board because of Indonesia's opposition to any armed intervention by the world body, reports PTI…."

London Daily Express 9/3/99 Geoff Spencer "…This is the price of democracy - a teenage boy shot and butchered just because he wants his homeland to govern itself. Jorges Fransisco Bonaparte, 19, a supporter of East Timorese independence, was set upon yesterday by anti-independence militias during a murderous rampage in the capital Dili. …"

Radio Australia 9/3/99 "…UN evacuates staff from East Timor town of Maliana The United Nations has evacuated staff from the militia-ruled East Timor town of Maliana, after a night-long rampage by militiamen left several people dead. Geoff Thompson reports a convoy of cars carrying 40 international and 14 local staff arrived in Dili, with some reporting they left Maliana "on fire." U-N staff in Maliana had long been expecting the UN employees expressed the hope the evacuation would come sooner rather than later. The UN analysis of the town worst…."

BBC 9/3/99 "…The violence could escalate over the weekend if, as is widely expected, the East Timorese have voted in favour of independence from Indonesia. Four United Nations staff have been killed and 24 civilians have been reported massacred in one village by rampaging pro-Indonesia militias since Monday's poll on independence. One observer said Maliana - where two UN workers were hacked to death earlier in the week - had been turned into a ghost town. …"

AP 9/5/99 "…Tens of thousands of people fled East Timor on Sunday, terrified as pro-Indonesian militias besieged a U.N. compound and set fire to homes belonging to people who support independence for the province. Casualty reports were impossible to verify, though witnesses said scores were killed Sunday in the former Portuguese colony. Staff at two hospitals said they had treated about a dozen patients for machete wounds. Indonesian security forces, responsible for keeping the peace in East Timor since an overwhelming majority voted for independence, appeared to do little to stop the rampaging militias from taking control of the provincial capital, Dili. There is strong evidence that the militias are supported by elements of the Indonesian army…..``This is the time that we badly need some peacekeeping troops in this region to protect ordinary people who have no weapons, such as children, women and the elderly,'' Belo told reporters….."

Deakin University AUSTRALIA 9/6/99 Scott Burchill "...When an extraordinary 98.6% of eligible East Timorese voted last Monday (30 August) to decide whether their political futures lay as members of an autonomous province of the Republic of Indonesia or as citizens of an independent state, the early signs were ominous for Jakarta and the pro-integrationists. It wasn't just the extraordinary sight of people who had never decided their own political destiny queuing before dawn outside 800 UN polling stations scattered around the territory. It was the realization that months of intimidation and terror by Indonesian-directed militias had failed to deter the East Timorese from determining their future political arrangements. ...... In the weeks leading up to the ballot, it was clear to most observers that Indonesia's security forces had no intention of maintaining law and order in East Timor and that a UN authorized armed peacekeeping mission would be required to prevent the Jakarta-backed militias from slaughtering the population. Preparations for such a mission, initiated by the United States, were thwarted by the Australian Government which sought to avoid upsetting Indonesia's armed forces. The consequent delay, and Canberra's insistence that nothing can be done until Jakarta invites the UN into East Timor will cost thousands of lives. The West's shameful betrayal of the people of East Timor continues. ..."

etherzone.com 9/8/99 Phil Brennan "….And like the recent Clinton fiasco in Kosovo - a fiasco that killed a lot of people - the spectacle of the horror of East Timor is going to draw us into another so-called peacekeeping operation - one more drain on our rapidly depleting military resources. And a lot more people are going to die. et's look at the East Timor horror first: (From Britain's Mirror newspaper) "Machete killers running wild on island of hate" "CRAZED head-hunters rampaged in East Timor yesterday - amid grim warnings of more terrible carnage to come. Hundreds of headless bodies were reported lying by the roadside after black-shirted militia opposed to independence stormed through the island's capital Dili. Machetes were used to chop off the heads of those who want to free the former Portuguese colony from Indonesian control. A woman who fled Dili with her sick baby told of passing a mass of bodies with the heads stuck on poles. Resistance leader Joao Carrascalao said he knew and trusted the woman. He added: "She was talking about hundreds of heads." Militia backed by Indonesian forces have driven more than 150,000 people - nearly a quarter of the population of East Timor - from their homes." Sound familiar? Sound like the kind of atrocity stories that led us into the Kosovo conflict? Is there any doubt that we are going to get involved here? Now to pinning the blame where it belongs: on our wonderful, compassionate President. …..Remember the name of Moctar RIADY - that Indonesian billionaire buddy of Bill Clinton's - the Chinese-born banker who funneled all that illegal cash into the Clinton presidential campaigns? Riady was Clinton's contact with Indonesia's former dictator Suharto and his crooked associates who bled that nation dry. Writes World Net Daily columnist Charles Smith: "U.S. President Clinton and Indonesian President Suharto have often been accused of corruption by their critics, and rightly so. Newly declassified documents now show that both Presidents joined to form an alliance of global corruption, collusion and nepotism." It's a complicated story, and Smith has all the goods that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Clinton is up to his neck in corrupt dealings with crooked Suharto relatives and associates. His Softwar column is must reading for anyone who wants to plumb the depths of Clinton's corruption. Go here for Smith's blockbuster expose (www.worldnetdaily.com)……Clinton knew all about this background. Last week, the East Timorese voted to become independent from Indonesia. Everyone knew that the Indonesians would not tolerate the loss of what they consider a part of the Indonesian nation. Would not tolerate it, that is, if they believed they could get away with it. And given Clinton's bowing and scraping to his Indonesian partners in corruption, is it any wonder that they have moved to suppress Timorese independence without fearing retaliation? Now the slaughter has begun. Obviously the world cannot sit idly by and allow it to continue. So in we will we go. Again….."

International Herald Tribune 9/9/99 Jim Hoagland Wash Post "…Asia's vast economic potential and its enduring romantic appeal have dominated and enfeebled Western thinking about the region in the 1990s. In the first blush of the global age, Asia became the promising future and Europe the grim past in Conventional Wisdom 101…..The powers of Europe and North America, seduced by the promises of riches that the Asian status quo provides, have not sought to advance serious political change in the area….. East Timor must be seen as a last wake-up call for the world on Indonesia's ongoing revolution and on Asia's potential to become the Balkans of the future rather than a new El Dorado. For all of their problems, NATO's interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo prove that Europe did learn the lessons of two world wars, one of them being to keep the United States deeply involved in European security. Another has been to develop regional economic superstructures that foster stabilizing forms of political integration….."

New York Times 9/9/99 ELIZABETH BECKER and PHILIP SHENON "…The United States is resisting direct threats of economic or military sanctions against Indonesia over the chaos in East Timor in hopes of preserving its relationship with that vast archipelago nation, even as the Clinton administration protests the chaos that has left hundreds of Timorese dead, senior officials said. The administration, these officials said, has made the calculation that the United States must put its relationship with Indonesia, a mineral-rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny, impoverished territory of 800,000 people that is seeking independence….."

AFP 9/8/99 "…The United States must immediately sever military assistance to Indonesia until Jakarta implements East Timor's August 30 vote for independence, several US senators said on introducing a bill to that effect Wednesday. "I am outraged at what is going on in East Timor today," said Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, principal author of a bill that would cut off such assistance and require Washington to oppose any international loans to Indonesia. "The Indonesian government clearly has not lived up to its commitment to maintain security, and in fact is openly supporting the militia violence," added Feingold, whose bill drew support from several other Democratic senators. …."

Reuters, via News Plus 9/9/99 Jane Nelson "….Australia was increasingly confident that the United States would join an international peacekeeping force to troubled East Timor, Prime Minister John Howard said on Thursday. Howard said U.S. President Bill Clinton told him on the telephone the United States had not ruled out the possibility of sending its troops to join a U.N. peacekeeping mission, despite earlier reports that such a decision had been made.

"The situation is not that the United States has ruled out the contribution of troops," Howard told reporters.

"The situation is that they will support a multinational force in a tangible way. The extent of that commitment...is still under discussion," he said. ….."

Calgary Sun 9/9/99 Linda Slobodian "…Bullies can go on a ruthless, bloody rampage at the most inconvenient times. And before anyone can come to the rescue of the utterly helpless, among them always the very old and children, there is much hand-wringing to be done, meetings to hold, papers to shuffle, economic ties to fret about, political formalities to work through. While everyone's properly taking care of business, the corpse count mounts.

Just like Rwanda, it's not like no one knew the slaughter was coming. Just like Rwanda, little seems to have been done to try to stop it. Months ago, rumblings started that East Timor would be the next hot spot. Hot spots in this crazy world are places rife with massacres, ethnic cleansing, fleeing refugees. Just like East Timor is now. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people -- so far -- have been killed by gangs of pro-Indonesian militia since the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly Aug. 30 to break away from 23 years of brutal Indonesian rule. Their independence vote was met with an explosion of violence, shooting, looting. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people -- one-quarter of the tiny territory's population have fled and thus are now suffering refugees. …."

AFP 9/9/99 "…Iraq has voiced "strong opposition" to intervention by foreign troops in East Timor and urged the international community to let Indonesia sort out the crisis peacefully. "Iraq is following with great concern the dangerous developments and the escalation in East Timor as well as the threats to deploy foreign forces in the troubled region," a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday night. "Iraq strongly opposes any foreign intervention in national affairs and urges (the international community) to allow the Indonesian government to settle the Timor crisis and avoid spilling blood," he told Iraq's news agency. "Iraq condemns the use of threats and blackmail by foreign nations intent on achieving their own ends, not those of the people of the region." ….."

Sydney Morning Herald 5/1/99 The Whitlam Documents " ….. The Prime Minister said that he felt two things were basic to his own thinking on Portuguese Timor. First, he believed that Portuguese Timor should become part of Indonesia. Second, this should happen in accordance with the properly expressed wishes of the people of Portuguese Timor. The Prime Minister emphasised that this was not yet Government policy but that it was likely to become that.

The Prime Minister said that he felt very strongly that Australia should not seek, or appear to seek, any special interests in Portuguese Timor. They were people with a different ethnic background, languages and culture. It would be unrealistic and improper if we were to seek some special relationship. At the same time he believed that Portuguese Timor was too small to be independent. It was economically unviable. Independence would be unwelcome to Indonesia, to Australia and to other countries in the region, because an independent Portuguese Timor would inevitably become the focus of attention of others outside the region….. INDONESIAN POLICY TOWARDS PORTUGUESE TIMOR President Soeharto thanked the Prime Minister for his clear explanation of Australia's position on Portuguese Timor. He explained Indonesia's support for the principle of decolonisation and recalled Indonesia's own independence struggle. At the same time, he emphasised his concern that decolonisation in Portuguese Timor should not upset either Indonesian or regional security. He noted the geographical situation of Portuguese Timor in the midst of Indonesian territory and on the periphery of Australia. He said that incorporation of Portuguese Timor raised important constitutional and legal problems for Indonesia. The 1945 Constitution provided for a unitary State. The Constitution, adopted as a challenge to colonial rule, would neither accept colonialism nor allow the Indonesian Government to seek to colonise others. Indonesia has no territorial ambitions. The emphasis in the Constitution on the unitary state also meant that incorporation of Portuguese Timor could not lead to a violation of the Constitution by giving the territory any special status. The President said that Portuguese Timor faced two alternatives -- independence, and incorporation with another country. If Portuguese Timor were to become independent, it would give rise to problems. It was not economically viable. It would have to seek the help of another country but Portuguese Timor would be of interest only because of its political importance. There was a big danger that communist countries -- China or the Soviet Union -- might gain the opportunity to intervene. This would lead in turn to intervention by the other great powers. Portuguese Timor in the way would become "a thorn in the eye of Australia and a thorn in Indonesia's back"……. Portuguese Timor could not be incorporated, as an autonomous region, or daerah, like the special district of Yogyakarta. Ultimately the Indonesians hoped for the incorporation of Portuguese Timor as being in the best interests of the region, of Indonesia and of Australia. The President shared the belief that this should occur on the basis of the freely expressed wishes of the people of Portuguese Timor. ….."

Los Angeles Times 9/9/99 Jose Ramos-Horta "….JOSE RAMOS-HORTA shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 with Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, whose home was burned to the ground Tuesday by militias roaming Dili, the capital of East Timor. Ramos-Horta spoke with Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels on Wednesday. Question: Why is the violence taking place now, after the independence vote? Who is committing it? Answer: The killing is a well-designed strategy prepared for a long time by the Indonesian Army intelligence and special forces. They have their own agenda, and it is very simple: They are not prepared to relinquish East Timor, regardless of the vote in favor of independence and regardless of the commitment by Indonesian President B.J. Habibie. The so-called "militias" are a fiction. Most of these militia members are not East Timorese opposing autonomy but are Indonesians recruited from West Timor. Among the militias are special forces and Indonesian police in plain clothes. And it is not even these militias that are carrying out the main violence. They don't have the firepower to destroy buildings. And where on Earth would these local militias get the means to ship tens of thousands of people out of East Timor? The Indonesian army, like the Serbian army in Kosovo, arranged for this mass deportation of our people. They have provided the ships to take the people away. Q: What is the objective of their campaign? A: To overturn the vote. As far as the army is concerned, the vote is history. They know if they don't accept it, there is no one who will enforce it. Again, let me stress: The war is not being waged by the 20% of the East Timorese who voted for autonomy over independence. We had meetings with all their leaders and they were prepared to accept the vote and join us in a power-sharing arrangement. It is the Indonesian army that is waging this war. ….."

Stratfor.com 9/9/99 "….Reports of continued violence and bloodshed in East Timor have intensified calls for international intervention. The UN has dispatched a five-member mission to Jakarta to press the Indonesian government to bring East Timor under control or give permission for a peacekeeping force to enter. While the world debates the political ramifications of sending in an international force, it is equally important to consider what such a force would face on the ground……. Many of the pro-integration militia were originally set up and armed by the Indonesian military as additional security forces in East Timor. Similar civilian militia have been established throughout Indonesia, including a 12,000-member militia established to help ensure order during the June general elections. With the increasing chaos and confusion, it becomes important to assess just what opposition an international force would face if deployed to East Timor. East Timor currently has between 20,000 and 30,000 armed pro-integration militia fighters. These include groups like the Integration Fighters Force (PPI), the Red-White Storm and the United Front for Autonomy. The pro-integration militia are not a unified fighting force. Some are armed with weapons supplied by Indonesia’s armed forces; others rely on more primitive weapons……Any international force entering East Timor would face a confused and disconnected militia, many armed with primitive weapons, but all quite familiar with the area’s mountains and forests. They would also face some of Indonesia’s military (including Kopassus, Indonesia’s special forces), as it is unclear whether there is any command and control over troops in the area. Further emphasizing the lack of control, Indonesia announced September 8 it has replaced the army commander in East Timor….."

Toronto Sun 9/9/99 "…East Timor makes Kosovo look like a tea party. If you're wondering why the West, including Canada, was so quick to bomb the latter and is now so slow to intervene in the former, read on. In both cases a people's expressed desire for independence - in East Timor by a vote last week in which 78.5% favoured separation from Indonesia - has been met with brutal repression. In both cases, militia/paramilitaries opposed to independence are waging a campaign of terror - murdering civilians and creating tens of thousands of refugees (ethnic cleansing), while the army at best turns a blind eye and at worst, encourages atrocities. Prior to this, and since Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975, 275,000 people out of a then population of 690,000 have died from war, starvation and disease, including 60,000 killed in mass executions in the first two months. This ratio of evil surpasses even Pol Pot in Cambodia. It dwarfs Serb atrocities in Kosovo…… As Rick Mercer noted recently in The Nation: "There is a very good reason why the documented genocide in East Timor has been met with silence over the years in the same countries where leaders (beat) their chests and (proclaimed) the righteousness of their military adventure in the Balkans: Several of these nations have aided and abetted the Indonesian war criminals who have cultivated East Timor's killing fields ... The UN General Assembly has passed resolutions condemning the invasion and occupation (of East Timor) on eight separate occasions, but Japan, the United States, Great Britain and Australia distinguished themselves by either voting against the resolution or abstaining ..."

http://etherzone.com/ 9/9/99 Mary Mostert "….Q "You're saying that you can engage in preventive wars to avoid ethnic cleansing, to avoid any sort of genocide?" BERGER: "I think every situation has to be taken on its own merits. And I think the President has said many times that it depends upon whether America's national interests are involved, as well as our values. I think in this case, both our values and our interests are involved. Our values are involved in preventing what I believe would be a humanitarian catastrophe. Our interests are involved in avoiding a wider conflict in Southeastern Europe, which I think would most likely involve us at some later point with far greater cost and with far greater risk. Thank you". Of course, both Croatia and Bosnia were provinces of Yugoslavia which were in the process of seceding. East Timor, on the other hand has NEVER been a province of Indonesia, having been a colony of Portugal for over 400 years. ….. After 2000 people were killed in all of 1998, 300 of whom were Serb police, postmen, farmers, etc., Clinton decided to spend billions of your hard-earned tax dollars to bomb them back to the stone age, with no concern for either Yugoslav sovereignty or its civilian population. Now we have a situation where the U.S. government not only encouraged the vote, but appropriated money to make sure it took place, but after the voting resulted in an overwhelming vote for independence we are going to just pull out the UN observers and let the Indonesian army and militia ethnically cleanse East Timor? Is our foreign policy reduced to the support of anarchy, drug dealers and murderers? …."

AFP 9/8/99 "….About 100 people including three Catholic priests died during an attack on a local parish in Suai, East Timor, the missionary agency Misna reported Wednesday. The victims were killed by anti-independence militias, Misna said, quoting the Jesuit Refugees Service, which is caring for East Timorese refugees. The agency identified one of the priests killed as Tarcisius Dewanto, 34, but did not give the names of the other two clergymen. The Vatican earlier Wednesday condemned attacks against the Catholic population of East Timor and called for an international peacekeeping force deployment in the former Portuguese colony. …."

Stratfor.com 9/9/99 "…2156 GMT, 990909 – Coup Rumors in Indonesia Signal a Retrenching of Armed Forces Rumors of a coup in the works spread through Jakarta September 8 fueled by a closed-door meeting between President B.J. Habibie and military commanders as well as Habibie’s decision not to leave the country to attend APEC. While the government and military denied the rumors, the events themselves may indicate that the splits in the Indonesian military are being repaired and the defense apparatus is reentering the political sphere. In the near to mid-term, the military’s reemergence as a political actor will give Indonesia the stability needed to carry through the presidential transition and the loss of East Timor. The meeting in Jakarta and a change of command in the East Timor forces are signs that Armed Forces Chief Gen. Wiranto is regaining control over the military, healing long-standing fractures that have recently expanded. …."

Catholic Church leaders said they believed militias were systematically killing priests and nuns as part of a broader genocide. One of those believed to have been murdered was Father Francisco Barreto, director of Caritas, the Catholic aid agency in East Timor. …."

Washington Post 9/10/99 Steven Mufson and Bradley Graham "….President Clinton, citing "gross abuses" in East Timor, moved yesterday to isolate Indonesia by cutting off U.S. military ties, and the International Monetary Fund effectively suspended its multibillion-dollar lending program to the Southeast Asian nation. Clinton called on the Indonesian government to accept an Australian-led international military force to restore order in East Timor, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence in a referendum last week….."

South China Morning Post 9/10/99 "….Anti-independence militiamen fired shots at a UN evacuation convoy as it headed through the ravaged streets of Dili to the airport today, witnesses said. The militiamen, possibly fuelled by alcohol looted from a warehouse, were unapposed by Indonesian troops and also stopped a party of Roman Catholic nuns who tried to make it to the airport on their own to catch one of the half-dozen flights to Darwin, Australia.

Their driver was beaten up, but the nuns managed to reach the airport, which was under the control of Australian troops. The incidents happaned as the UN decided to retain a skeleton staff in East Timor. …..The UN compound, besieged for days by Indonesian troops and their militia allies who have turned Dili into a burned-out ghost town, was evacuating about 350 staff, including 160 local workers, aboard a half-dozen flights. Staying behind was a skeleton staff of about 80 to do what they can to shepherd East Timor toward independence, chosen by 78.5 per cent of voters in a UN-organised referendum August 30. Among those fleeing Friday was UN mission head Ian Martin, wearing a light blue flak jacket……Most Indonesians are Muslim….."

Washington Post 9/10/99 "….EARLIER THIS year, after NATO's bombing campaign persuaded Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his marauding troops from Kosovo, President Clinton informed "the people of the world" that a new era had dawned. "Whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it," the president declared. Now just such a scenario is unfolding. The horror in East Timor is strikingly reminiscent of Serbia's despoliation of Kosovo. Innocent civilians are being rounded up, expelled and killed by soldiers and paramilitaries who do not want East Timor to leave their country of Indonesia. As in Kosovo, whole towns apparently are being leveled, stores and homes are being sacked and burned. Catholic priests, independence leaders and their relatives are reportedly being singled out for assassination.

But the administration's expansive view of its global responsibilities appears to have constricted considerably in the face of this first post-Kosovo challenge…..Mr. Berger contrasted the "humanitarian problem" of East Timor with the "strong security and strategic consequences" he said were at stake in Kosovo. He also pointed out that Kosovo is "in the middle of Europe," while "I think we have to recognize that Indonesia is in Asia." But surely a theme of the Clinton presidency has been the significance of Asia to America's future. Even more important, East Timor can no longer be viewed as only a human tragedy to be balanced against considerations of sea lanes and bank loans. If the world powers, having staked their prestige on self-determination for East Timor, can so easily allow their will to be flouted, the "security and strategic consequences" will be immense, and they will resonate far beyond Indonesia…."

stratfor.com 9/9/99 "…Calls for international intervention in East Timor have increased in urgency following the imposition of martial law September 7. A five-member UN mission is in Jakarta to urge the Indonesian government either to bring East Timor under control or allow UN involvement in restoring the peace. To date, Indonesia has refused to allow foreign intervention until after the parliament meets in October to ratify the East Timor referendum results. Despite Indonesia’s insistence that it be allowed to deal with its own internal problems, reports that military and police forces are contributing to the chaos in Dili lead us to believe that the military will not bring the situation under control any time soon….. While the police and Indonesian military may be cooperating, and are linked historically with the militia, they are not one and the same. Many of the pro-integration militia were originally set up and armed by the Indonesian military as additional security forces in East Timor. Similar civilian militia have been established throughout Indonesia, including a 12,000-member militia established to help ensure order during the June general elections. …."

Fox News/Reuters 9/10/99 "….The crisis in East Timor has presented President Clinton with a knotty test of his doctrine, outlined during NATO air war in Kosovo, on when U.S. intervention in foreign conflict is justified.

The "Clinton doctrine,'' of intervening to stop ethnic cleansing while avoiding involvement in other types of civil strife, is proving a difficult fit to the crisis that erupted when Indonesian militias went on the rampage in East Timor.

The complex mix of security and humanitarian issues has forced Clinton to acknowledge that he lacks a clear solution, even as voices in Congress and elsewhere clamor for an end to the crisis. "This is an example of how messy global politics and diplomacy are going to be going into the 21st century, of how messy they are now,'' said a Clinton administration security official. ……. In East Timor, as in Kosovo, civilians are being killed en masse, this time in the wake of an Aug. 30 vote for independence from Indonesia, which forcibly annexed the former Portuguese colony after a 1975 invasion. But other issues are complicating the case for involvement. As Clinton pointed out Thursday, East Timor is in a gray area of having voted for independence but not having received it, meaning an intervention which could be viewed as interfering in a country's internal affairs. And although East Timor is predominantly Roman Catholic compared to the predominantly Muslim remainder of Indonesia, the conflict there is regarded there as a nationalistic issue rather than as strife between ethnic or religious groups….."

Reuters 9/10/99 Anthony Goodman "….U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Indonesia Friday to accept immediately a peacekeeping force for violence-racked East Timor or face responsibility for ``what could amount ... to crimes against humanity.'' ``In any event, those responsible for these crimes must be called to account,'' he told a news conference...."

WSWS.org 9/10/99 Nick Beams "….Reports from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, suggest that interim president B.J. Habibie has been virtually stripped of his powers, with effective command passing to Defence Minister and armed forces chief General Wiranto. Regardless of the precise outcome, this week's events show that the military remains the real force in Indonesia, despite the so-called democratic changes of the past 18 months. The clearest indication that Habibie had lost his authority came with the declaration of martial law in East Timor on Monday. General Wiranto had pushed for the declaration at a plenary meeting of the Cabinet but was turned down. However, only hours later, following a meeting with Habibie, he secured a decree invoking martial law. The martial law declaration was followed by a flurry of rumours that Habibie had been deposed in a coup by the military. On Wednesday, Wiranto emerged from a three-hour meeting with Habibie to deny that a coup had been carried out, saying the rumours were baseless and that they were an attempt to disturb national security. However, a Habibie presidential aide said the rumours had been created by the military……"

Associated Press 9/10/99 Patrick McDowell "….Drunk on stolen beer, pro-Indonesian militiamen looted the U.N. compound in East Timor on Friday, smashing equipment and terrifying East Timorese still inside after most of the U.N. staff were evacuated. As Indonesian troops fired guns to intimidate the 80 remaining U.N. workers as well as several journalists and hundreds of refugees, militia extremists chanted for them to be burned out. Gunfire sent two elderly women scrambling over the wall into the compound, shredding their arms on barbed wire. A death toll has been impossible to determine. Estimates have ranged from 600 to 7,000 dead. On Saturday, a high-level U.N. delegation left on a four-hour flight from Jakarta to Dili to assess the situation and make recommendations to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on whether to keep the U.N. compound open. …."

International Herald Tribune 9/11/99 William Pfaff "…James Rubin, the spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said Tuesday that ''East Timor is not Kosovo.'' This was in explanation of why U.S. interest in the crisis there is limited to ''humanitarian concerns and strategically located sea lanes.'' Mr. Rubin, however, is mistaken. The reason the international community has a problem with East Timor is that it is another Kosovo. It did not begin that way, but that is what it has become. Governments have trouble explaining why they have done nothing effective about Indonesia's conduct in East Timor. A few weeks ago, many were incautiously announcing the arrival of a new age of ''humanitarian wars'' to do justice. They were making unguarded forecasts about the significance of NATO's victory over Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. ……. Many argued that a new humanitarian internationalism had been created, which in the future could stop and punish ethnic cleansing, mass deportations, state terrorism and war crimes. The age of sovereign nations would yield to an international sovereignty. But all this implied promises that could not be kept. Treaties and war crimes courts are useless if there is no power to enforce them or to impose their judgments. The United Nations has no power of its own. And this fact has had lethal consequences in East Timor, when combined with the UN's promise that its people could become independent if they so chose. The Security Council thus far has declined to support the promise made in its name. …."

Washington Post 9/11/99 Steven Mufson and Colum Lynch "….. The United States and the United Nations ratcheted up rhetorical pressure on Indonesia yesterday, with President Clinton branding militia violence in East Timor "simply unacceptable" and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan raising the specter of war crimes charges.

"It is now clear that the Indonesian military is aiding and abetting the militia violence," Clinton said in a statement issued aboard Air Force One as he flew to a meeting of Pacific leaders in New Zealand. "This is simply unacceptable." In New York, Annan called on Indonesia's leaders to allow an international peacekeeping force into East Timor, which has been engulfed by violence since it voted to become independent from Indonesia in a referendum last week. In his harshest criticism yet, the U.N. secretary general warned that if Indonesia continues to resist international help, it "cannot escape responsibility for what could amount . . . to crimes against humanity."

"Those responsible for these crimes must be called to account," he said. …."

International Herald Tribune 9/11/99 A. Lin Neumann "…. When machete-wielding thugs set upon journalists in East Timor after the territory's Aug. 30 vote for independence, it looked like another gruesome case of the press caught between warring sides. Deplorable, yes, but it comes with the territory if you choose to cover the front lines in conflict zones. Look again. Something far more cynical is at work this time. The Indonesian government - or at some command level, the military - has used armed gangs to rid East Timor of witnesses to the terror to come.

With few exceptions, the press corps covering East Timor has now been evacuated. And when you remove the press from a story, you remove the world's eyes. As atrocities continue, we are prevented from seeing, learning and judging the scope of the tragedy. The damage to Indonesia's credibility and its fragile democracy is incalculable. Since former President Suharto stepped aside last year, Asians and many others have watched in amazement as the Indonesian media blossomed with a vibrancy that seemed to dissipate the dark shadows of Mr. Suharto's New Order regime. ……There were no casualties among the correspondents covering East Timor. While that is a relief, it also looks like part of the larger plan. It is evident enough that those supporting the gangs concluded that a correspondent's death would create too big a problem. ….."

Sydney Morning Herald 9/11/99 Lindsay Murdoch "…. The destruction of the capital is greater than anybody could imagine. Hundreds of houses are blackened shells. The doors of government offices are ajar. Banks, cafes, hotels, boarding houses, service stations: all burnt or trashed. One building - the police station - hides one of the most shocking of many shocking stories that have emerged so far from East Timor's killing fields. Two days ago Ina Bradridge, wife of Mr Isa Bradridge, 45, of Ballina, walked the corridors of the station looking for a toilet. According to Mr Bradridge, who told her story last night after evacuation to Darwin, she happened to glance inside a large building that she knew was once used as a torture cell for political prisoners. "My wife told me she saw bodies. Thousands of them. Stacks of bodies went up to the roof. I know it is hard to believe but it is absolutely true. My wife saw arms and legs and dripping blood." Now, from the safety of Australia, Mr Bradridge plans to do a lot of talking on behalf of his wife, who can't speak English, in the next few days. "They [the Indonesian military] are going to obliterate everybody," he said before boarding one of the evacuation trucks with his family. The East Timorese have a choice ... they either leave or die." …."

AP 9/11/99 "….President Clinton met Saturday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin and said he is ``eager to get on with'' repairing troubled relations and achieving an elusive trade deal with Beijing. But Clinton stressed that U.S. policy toward Taiwan, a sore spot with China, ``has not and will not change.'' He said the United States will maintain ``a one-China policy,'' which does not recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. For his part, Jiang said China's policy toward Taiwan ``is one of peaceful unification.'' But he did not rule out using force against Taiwan if there were any outside interference in their dispute, or if Taiwan asserted independence. ``We would not undertake to renounce the use of force,'' the Chinese leader said. …."

SCMP 9/11/99 "…Beijing's arsenal targeting the United States is likely to grow over the next 15 years to include mobile missiles with smaller warheads, according to US intelligence made public yesterday. The smaller warheads were built in part with stolen US technology, the report said. China last month tested its first road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which US analysts believe has an 8,000km range and will primarily
target Russia and Asia. The National Intelligence Estimate of missile threats said it expected "a test of a longer-range mobile ICBM within the next several years; it will be targeted primarily against the US". …"

Washington Post 9/12/99 Keith Richburg "….Indonesia's military chief, Gen. Wiranto, conceded today that his soldiers in violence-wracked East Timor have aligned with rampaging militiamen and, apparently reversing himself under intense international pressure, opened the door to "accelerated deployment" of foreign troops to bring order to the ravaged territory. Diplomats here depicted Wiranto's statement as the first movement after days of defiance from Jakarta as calls mounted for international peacekeepers to stop the violence that has engulfed East Timor since an overwhelming majority of its 800,000 people voted for independence in a U.N.-sponsored referendum Aug. 30.

"There seem to be indications that there may be a shift in the Indonesian position," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said at his New York headquarters. "Yesterday, Gen. Wiranto was saying, 'in three months' time.' Today, he seems to have softened his position, indicating that they may allow the peacekeepers to go in earlier."

President Clinton, attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Auckland, New Zealand, also predicted Indonesia will allow an international peacekeeping force to enter East Timor soon. "I think you'll see a development there in the next couple of days," he told reporters. "I think something will happen. I'll be surprised if it doesn't." ….."

AP 9/11/99 "….The Indonesian army and their militia allies have attacked and slaughtered refugees in a town once considered a safe haven in East Timor, a U.N. spokesman said Sunday, quoting refugees in the area. Though reports of atrocities are streaming out of devastated East Timor, the account from U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst in Darwin, Australia, was one of the most dramatic and immediate to date. ``We were told at 11:30 this morning that the militias and the TNI -- the armed forces -- were attacking the refugees. We have just received a third piece of information, from another refugee in that area, who's on the top of the mountains overlooking Dare,'' Wimhurst told CNN television. His voice showing obvious anger and disbelief, Wimhurst added: ``He has reported 10 minutes ago that he can hear shots being fired below him. People are screaming, and the Indonesian army is advancing up the mountain, slaughtering refugees. That is happening now, as we speak.'' …."

Associated Press via canoe.com 9/12/99 Geoff Spencer "…The Indonesian army and their militia allies attacked refugees seeking shelter in an East Timor town Sunday, a U.N. spokesman said, citing refugee witnesses. The Indonesian armed forces, however, denied the report. …..Wimhurst told journalists in Darwin that said a witness near Dare had reported "wanton" killing of East Timorese refugees. He said U.N. officials received another report at the same time from a refugee in the hills above Dare who, over cellular phone, described the attack as it occurred. "Lower down the mountain he can hear shots being fired, people are screaming. The TNI (Indonesian armed forces) appears to be advancing up the mountain killing people wantonly," Wimhurst said. "The TNI are advancing up the mountain, killing everyone. They are still slaughtering people in Timor." …."

AP 9/12/99 Terence Hunt "….Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, said the United States hopes the peacekeepers -- led by Australia and largely with forces from Asian nations -- will deploy ``in the next several days.'' ``This will involve U.S. troops,'' Berger said. ``Some of those troops will be in Timor but they will be, I think, of limited numbers. And I don't want to rule out anything categorically but the focus is not on infantry forces.''

The United States will supply planes and pilots to carry troops, and help with logistics, communications and intelligence, Clinton said. After adamantly refusing outside assistance, Indonesia abruptly reversed itself, apparently defusing an international crisis and averting condemnation from leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC)….."

Electronic Telegraph 9/13/99 Patrick Bishop George Jones "….AUSTRALIA was preparing last night to lead an international peacekeeping force, including more than 250 British Gurkhas, to East Timor after Indonesia bowed to mounting world pressure to allow the United Nations to restore order. The abrupt reversal of policy over the handling of "out of control" militiamen was announced by President B J Habibie in a national television address. He pledged that UN troops would be allowed in to restore peace, protect the population and implement the referendum vote for independence. World leaders applauded the decision but were cautious about its implementation. Inside the squalid UN compound in the East Timorese capital Dili, where 1,000 refugees have been living in terror for 10 days, penned in by murderous militia gunmen abetted by Indonesian troops, the news was met with jubilation.

"It is as if a death sentence has been lifted," said a Western journalist who, with 80 UN staff, stayed as a human shield for the refugees. Despite Dr Habibie also allowing a ship into Dili to evacuate the compound, staff and refugees remained on full alert for fear that the militias, enraged by the capitulation, might launch a last round of bloodshed. …."

Stratfor 9/12/99 "….Ever since the fall of Sukarno, Australia and New Zealand have existed in a splendid isolation. Indeed, a generation of Australians and New Zealanders came to the conclusion that their isolation was both natural and eternal. It was the way things were and the way they would be. In reality, though, the isolation was imperfect. Both countries have been physically secure from invasion, but both are also trading countries. As producers of primary products like meat and minerals, and as advanced industrial countries, both nations have depended heavily on international trade. ….. The slow but steady implosion of Indonesia changes the equation. Certainly, it has changed the behavior of the Australian government, which has taken the lead in organizing a force to move into East Timor. Aside from actions in Papua New Guinea and Bougainville both low-level interventions within Australia s sphere of influence Australia has until now confined its interventions to minor missions in support of U.S. interventions. Thus, the decision to be the lead mule in managing the East Timor crisis represents a substantial change in policy for Australia. …"

Judicial Watch 9/13/99 Joe Giganti "….Judicial Watch, a non-profit law firm that exposes and prosecutes government corruption, raised questions today about whether the proposed sending of U.S. military personnel to Indonesia's East Timor is a quid pro quo for campaign contributions from Indonesia. The powerful Indonesian conglomerate, the Lippo Group, pumped millions into the Clinton campaigns for the presidency. A former employee of the Lippo Group, John Huang, was then placed in a sensitive position at the Clinton Commerce Department where Judicial Watch discovered he had access to classified briefings. In his now famous deposition to Judicial Watch in October, 1996, Huang boasted of the "help," i.e. money, that his former Indonesian employers gave to Clinton in 1992. In 1992, the Indonesian/Lippo-linked Worthen Bank gave Clinton's campaign a $2 million loan that many credit with keeping his then-foundering candidacy alive. The Riady family, the powerful Indonesian family behind the Lippo Group, reportedly called Huang their man in the United States Government. Reports in The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere showed how the Indonesian government then received special favors and consideration from Clinton. Indeed, Huang continued his contacts while at the Clinton Commerce Department with his former employers at the Lippo Group, which also been linked to Chinese intelligence. Clinton later placed Huang in the DNC where he raised over $3 million, mostly from Chinese-based sources….."

AP Wire 9/13/99 "….The Asian Development Bank is deferring approval of about $500 million in loans to Indonesia because of alleged financial irregularities implicating backers of President B.J. Habibie. The allegations center on an $80 million transfer from Bank Bali to a company controlled by a senior official in the ruling Golkar party. Golkar opponents claim the funds were meant to finance Habibie's re-election campaign. The election is in November. Indonesia has been trying to fight its way of economic troubles that overwhelmed the country in 1997. The Asian Development Bank is a multinational lending agency for Asian countries. ``I think there is skepticism about the government's capability in the reform process,'' Shoji Nishimoto, the ADB's director of programs department for East Asia, said Monday. ``We have joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in demanding a full and speedy investigation'' into the Bank Bali case, Nishimoto said. The IMF's relations with Indonesia have hit a new low, partly due to the scandal, the Bisnis Indonesia newspaper reported Monday….."

The Weekly Standard 9/20/99 "….Desperate East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta arrived in Washington last week to plead the case that the United States should do something to defend his countrymen from the Indonesian soldiers who have been on a murderous rampage against civilians in East Timor ever since they had the temerity to vote for independence in an August 30 referendum. Ramos-Horta's pleas induced a different sort of desperation in the Clinton foreign-policy apparat, which has long maintained cordial relations with the thugs of Jakarta: How to stiff the Nobel Prize winner and not look bad in the process? This was a particularly delicate task given the expansive promises the administration made during NATO's Kosovo offensive that it would never again turn its back on slaughter of the sort now being visited on the Timorese…….. Cohen's rhetoric was Churchillian, though, compared with that of national security adviser Samuel Berger, who wanted to clear up any confusion about American willingness to respond to humanitarian outrages: "You know, my daughter has a very messy apartment up in college," said Berger sarcastically; "maybe I shouldn't intervene to have that cleaned up." Thus the limits of power, according to Sandy Berger: Don't bother us with dirty laundry, or dead Timorese….."

Canadian press 9/13/99 "……A UN Security Council mission toured East Timor's bloodied and blackened and capital on Saturday, a city one of the UN envoys described as a "living hell." "The place is a terrible mess," said Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a British representative on the five-member of a special United Nations Security Council team. "It is no longer a living town." Indonesia has been is under heavy international pressure to halt massacres carried out by anti-independence militias angered by the territory's overwhelming vote last month in favour of ending Indonesian rule. Witnesses have given horrific accounts of violence over the last week in which machete-wielding militias, aided by Indonesian troops, went on a rampage after the UN-organized referendum showed that four-fifths of East Timor's 800,000 people favoured breaking from Indonesia. Aid agencies estimate that anywhere between 600 and 7,000 people have been killed and 100,000 driven into West Timor or to other islands. Some 200,000 other have been chased from their homes. ….."

Toronto Sun 9/14/99 Lorrie Goldstein "….If East Timor was Kosovo, we all know what would have happened by now. U.S. President Bill Clinton would have gone on national television to denounce Indonesian president B.J Habibie as a new Hitler and a threat to world peace. There would have been American-led cries (with a hearty, "Me too!" from Jean Chretien and Lloyd Axworthy) to indict Indonesia's army generals for war crimes. The media would be referring to what is now happening in East Timor as a "new Holocaust." The reason none of this is happening is obvious. The United States, the key player in both conflicts, regards Serbia as a pariah state and Indonesia as a valued trading partner. Say this much for the Americans. At least they address their blatant double standards and selective morality in the open. In Canada, our politicians simply ignore the huge discrepancies in approach, hoping no one will notice. Belgrade remember, was bombed for waging a campaign of murder, terror and ethnic cleansing against an independence movement in Kosovo in which 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed over a few months. Indonesia, by contrast, is being consulted on UN peacekeepers, including 600 Canadians, after the latest outrage in its 24-year campaign of murder, terror and ethnic cleansing against East Timor's independence, in which some 275,000 people have died. (One-third of East Timor's entire population prior to its 1975 invasion by Indonesia.) And yet no one calls for bombing Indonesia or Dili in East Timor the way Belgrade and Kosovo were bombed. ….."

International Herald Tribune 9/14/99 Gerald Segal "…. When Slobodan Milosevic began the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, the world rightly demanded that Europe meet the security and humanitarian challenge. As flawed as its response may have been, many of the challenges have been met. Consider the contrast in Asia, over East Timor. When Indonesia effectively undid the result of a United Nations-mandated referendum, all that one could hear from most East Asian governments was the loud sucking of thumbs. Which were the key countries marshaling diplomatic pressure on Indonesia to get it finally to agree, late on Sunday, to invite the United Nations to send an international peacekeeping force to help restore order? They were the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, not Japan, China or other East Asian countries….."

Boston Globe 9/14/99 James Carroll "… ''Pentagon reluctant to isolate Indonesia'' read a Globe headline a few days ago. Even this week, Defense Department officials opposed the military aid cutoff ordered by President Clinton, a belated but proper effort to influence events in East Timor. Now the ''bad actions'' of Indonesia's criminal military are on display for all to see, but they flow from a prior act of American bad judgment, the creation and on-going support of an Indonesian military whose overwhelming force has been directed only at domestic opposition or the illegally occupied East Timorese. The monster at large in East Timor this week was born in the United States.

America must wake up to what it has become. We replaced our Cold War mortal enemy with ourselves. We are enthralled with the ethos of weaponry at every level in our culture. We define power through gunsights - children do it on city streets, but so do the occupants of paneled rooms in Washington. There is no moral difference between profiteers who trade in cheap handguns and those who sell high-tech gunships in the developing world. In Waco the American cult of war collided with a cult of false religion, and innocents died. In East Timor, the cult of war reveals itself at its most extreme, and innocents die, in part and again, because of us. At home and across the world, history cries out to the United States of America to change….."

ASSOCIATED PRESS in Sydney via south China Morning Post Internet Edition 9/14/99 "….Lawyers from around the world will begin collecting eye witness testimony about atrocities committed in East Timor for future presentation to a United Nations war crimes tribunal, a senior judge said today. Justice John Dowd, president of the Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists, said lawyers would begin taking statements from East Timorese refugees. The testimony would be stored in a database that could be handed to a future UN court. Such a court has not yet been established, but it came a step closer to realization Monday when Mary Robinson, the UN's top human-rights envoy, said Indonesian President B.J. Habibie agreed that those responsible for atrocities in East Timor must be held accountable. …."

WorldNetDaily 9/14/99 Llewelynn Rockwell "…. The government of Indonesia must stop the slaughter in East Timor, says National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, or else. Or else what? Or else, there will be "implications for the capacity of the international community to support Indonesia's economic program." Whoa, that’s some pretty big talk there, Mr. Berger. Imagine: the Clinton administration is thinking, just thinking, about actually cutting some foreign aid. Must be serious. Indeed it is. A religiously distinct, economically oppressed, and militarily conquered people meekly voted for political independence, and are now paying the ultimate price. The East Timorese still have their sacred honor, but their fortunes were long ago stolen by the Indonesian central state, and now their lives are being sacrificed for the preservation of an imperial military nation state. Say, wasn’t it only yesterday this administration proclaimed that it had the divine duty to stop ethnic cleansing wherever it may occur? Well, it’s occurring–really occurring–but Berger is singing a different tune: "Because we bombed in Kosovo doesn't mean we have to bomb in Dili." Actually, to make the analogy stick, the US would have to bomb Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the way it bombed the ancient city of Belgrade. You can’t help noticing the hypocrisy. When Serbia wouldn’t let Kosovo go, the US terrorized the Serbian population until Milosevic relented. Indonesia won’t let East Timor go, and Clinton barely bothers to suggest Jakarta might politely invite UN peacekeepers in, with US troops not among them. ….."

Nation 9/27/99 "….With Dili burning and anti-independence militias carrying on a murderous terror campaign beneath the noses of Indonesian soldiers and police, the United Nations prepared to evacuate its East Timor mission as we went to press. Left behind would be thousands of Timorese who took refuge in the UN compound. It appears that once again the Timorese people have been abandoned, as they have been repeatedly since the Ford Administration's cynical acquiescence in Indonesia's unprovoked invasion of the territory in 1975 and the subsequent murder of 200,000 people. Allan Nairn, who reports in this issue on US complicity in the slaughter in East Timor, says that a senior Indonesian military official told UN personnel on September 8 that as soon as Timorese refugees are dealt with--meaning as soon as people who have sought safety outside their homes are deported--he will begin military operations. A Western military official told Nairn that he interpreted this as meaning a mass killing. ….."

BBC 9/15/99 Duncan Kennedy "....Eleven transport aircraft flights, organised by the Australian Air Force, took all day to ferry just under 1,500 refugees away from the besieged UN mission in the East Timorese capital, Dili. Many arrived in Australia in a traumatised state. Doctors found cases of measles and chicken pox among some of the children. Some of the women simply wept at the relief of getting out. Nizaria Fernandez was terrified as she left Dili. ..... "

International Herald Tribune 9/15/99 Philip Bowring "....In helping to make an international issue out of the East Timor tragedy, Western media and human rights and church groups have strengthened their self-image as a global moral police force. But no amount of brutality by the Indonesian military should disguise the discomforting aspects of the current crusade. Much is done in the name of the ''international community'' and ''international standards,'' vague concepts often invoked by the West regardless of whether they reflect the majority view of the United Nations, as over Palestine, or of allies such as Turkey, in the Kurdish case. On East Timor, the standard bearers of ''internationalism'' include former colonial states whose assumptions of a dutyto intervene are viewed with skepticism in Asia, even in countries which have agreed in principle to join a UN force. The Western urge to intervene might at least seem selfless if it were accompanied by acceptance of real losses. But, having in Kosovo shown scant willingness to risk many lives even for a cause on NATO and EU doorsteps, they seem unlikely to face down Indonesian militias should that be necessary to win in Timor....."

Associated Press via East China Morning Post 9/15/99 "....The United Nations' Security Council today gave the green light for an international peacekeeping force to move into the territory and use all force needed to reign in rampaging militias. The unanimous council vote came only 15 hours after the resolution was introduced, underscoring the widespread conviction among council members that peace will only come to East Timor with international forces on the ground. ''It's not often that the UN works as quickly as this,'' said British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, who introduced the draft. ''I hope this shows that the council has got its business in the right order, has got its priorities right and has moved with speed to follow up the secretary-general's call for action.'' Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese are estimated to have fled the half-island territory in the wake of a campaign of violence and intimidation launched by the Indonesian army and pro-Indonesian militia after the province voted overwhelmingly to secede from Indonesia....."

Stratfor.com 9/14/99 ".... Indonesia's decision to allow UN peacekeeping forces, apparently led by Australia, ends the political question over just who will end the strife that has gripped East Timor since its August 30 choice of independence. But at the same time, the international community now must squarely face the military question: Is an international force prepared for the situation it will face? ...... On September 13, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas said Indonesia would not set conditions on the makeup of the UN force that will go into East Timor, effectively ending the debate on such a force. This appears to clear the way for Australia to play the leading role in peacekeeping operations. While this announcement will be applauded in Washington and New York, it does not alter the situation on the ground in Dili. There is no evidence that the political establishment in Jakarta has any control over the military or the militias in East Timor. Thus the question is no longer political, but military. ...."

worldnetdaily.com 9/14/99 Charles Smith "...According to his official Clinton White House intelligence report, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie is "the type of official needed today in developing countries." The recently declassified documents show that in 1993 Habibie requested to see "Vice President Gore, Secretary of State Christopher, Secretary of Energy O'Leary, National Economic Council Chairman Rubin and the White House Director of Science Technology Policy Gibbons." The reports are part of a series of documents obtained from the U.S. Commerce Department using the Freedom of Information Act. The reports are part of a series of documents obtained from the U.S. Commerce Department using the Freedom of Information Act. The documents include allegations that Clinton officials knew of "corruption, collusion and nepotism" inside U.S.-funded projects for Indonesia. The documents show that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to bribe relatives of former President Suharto and help "crony" officials to obtain contracts. The newly declassified intelligence reports include full details on Habibie's life before he took over Indonesia as Suharto's handpicked successor. The documents were included in a 1993 briefing package given to Mission Energy Corp. Habibie's intelligence report reveals that he worked as an engineer in Germany for Messerschmitt, and as Indonesian technology minister, wanted to produce "7,000 megawatts of commercial nuclear power by the early 21st century."....."

south China Morning Post, internet edition 9/16/99 AnneMarie Evans "....The political cleansing of East Timor was planned as early as February, one of the militia leaders present at a meeting which hatched the deadly plot has revealed. Tomas Goncalves, 54, the former head of the 400-strong PPPI (Peace Force and Defender of Integration) militia said the killings had been agreed at a meeting on February 16 in the East Timorese capital, Dili. He said the talks were organised by the head of the SGI, the secret intelligence organisation of the military's Kopassus special forces. The head, Lieutenant-Colonel Yahyat Sudrajad, called for the killing of pro-independence movement leaders, their children and even their grandchildren, Mr Goncalves said. Not a single member of their families was to be left alive, the colonel told the meeting. Mr Goncalves said that also present were the heads of other militias covering the 12 regions of East Timor, including Eurico Guterres, of the Aitarak militia, and Joao Tavares of Besi Merah Putih. ....."

stratfor.com 9/16/99 "....The United Nations has now approved a peacekeeping force for East Timor, with troops preparing to land in the coming days. Still the prospects for success are unclear at best. The reaction of the Indonesian forces and militia will be the key variable influencing the outcome. The units now assembling for this mission appear adequately suited to keep peace - if local forces cooperate. But they appear wholly unsuited to force peace upon the territory. If they are called on to do so, they may put themselves in harm's way, or they may even have to delay landing in order to avoid that possibility....."

AFP 9/16/99 "...China will send a civilian police contingent to East Timor to join the multinational peacekeeping force, foreign ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said Thursday.... "

AP 9/16/99 "…. President Clinton gave the go-ahead Thursday for limited U.S. participation in an Australian-led peacekeeping force for East Timor. He said about 200 U.S. troops will be involved, but the Pentagon said the total could increase if Australia asks for more help. ``I have decided to contribute to the force in a limited but essential way, including communications and logistical aid, intelligence, airlifts of personnel and material and coordination of the humanitarian response to the tragedy,'' Clinton said….."

International Herald Tribune 9/17/99 Carlos Belo "….The people of East Timor face the specter of genocide. Although President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia announced on Sunday that international peacekeepers would be allowed in, nothing has actually changed since then. Merciless attacks on defenseless people have continued without respite. My people face wholesale slaughter. Decisive action by President Bill Clinton, the United States and the world is urgently needed before it is too late. Since the Aug. 30 United Nations-sponsored referendum, when 78.5 percent of those able to vote chose to become independent from Indonesia, a cyclone of violence orchestrated by Indonesian army elements has swept East Timor from end to end. …."

The New Australian No. 133, 9/13-19/99 Gerard Jackson "….The tragedy that is called East Timor demonstrates both the limits of US power and the moral bankruptcy of the Left. Engaging in his favourite pastime of moral posturing, the left-wing Anthony Lewis used The New York Times (republished in the Melbourne Age) to berate Henry Kissinger, damning him for having visited "the tyrant ruler of Indonesia, President Suharto, in December 1975." Of course, he also damned him for supporting Pinochet and the Shah of Persia. That America could not have done anything to prevent the 1975 Indonesian takeover of East Timor was ignored by Lewis, just as he ignored the embarrassing fact that Gough Whitlam, Australia's then-left-wing prime minister, gave Indonesia the go-ahead for the invasion. This is the same Australian government that supported Hanoi's conquest of South Vietnam. But in the eyes of the Left, only America is guilty….."

Asia Pulse 9/15/99 "....Lippo Bank, which has acknowledged giving a substantial amount in contributions to U.S. president Bill Clinton in his last presidential election, had denied doing the same to Indonesia Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P), the front runner in the country's recent parliamentary election. House Commission VIII in charge of economy, finance and banking asked the bank in a hearing Tuesday about a report that the bank had donated Rp500 billion (US$57 million) to PDI-P which is headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, popular as pro-democracy leader under the past regime of President Suharto. "We have heard and read in the mass media about this, but after undertaking an internal investigation it turned out to be a hoax," Lippo Bank president Eddy Sindoro said in a working session with the Commission here yesterday.....Another member stated, suspicion of Lippo contributing generously to PDI-P was quite logical, because the same case was also done by the Lippo Group to Bill Clinton. "If such is possible in the United States, why it is not possible in Indonesia," he added. ..."

yahoo news 9/17/99 Lewa Pardomuan Reuters "...Pro-Jakarta militiamen said they were ready to kill members of a U.N. force heading for East Timor Friday as the top bishop still in the territory warned of a new wave of massacres. In Jakarta, fresh protests broke out at the Australian embassy as Australian corporations evacuated their staff from Indonesia. Despite a relative calm in Dili, Red Cross officials said fresh blood on the streets showed that attacks by pro-Jakarta forces had not stopped. Smoke still hung over the city as the United Nations sent its first airdrops of urgent aid. The violence, launched by the militias and some elements of the military, was triggered by last month's ballot favoring independence from Indonesia. Thousands are thought to have been killed since the August 30 vote. ...."

BBC 9/17/99 Simon Ingram ".... Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militia groups are continuing their withdrawal from East Timor ahead of the arrival of a UN-backed peacekeeping force. Military officials in Jakarta say 8,000 soldiers are being pulled out of the territory with the rest to follow once the deployment of the Australian-led multi-national force begins in earnest, probably on Monday. In the largely deserted East Timorese capital, Dili, tension remains high, with bands of militia still visible on the streets and reports of more buildings being burned. Throughout Friday the to-ings and fro-ings of military transport aircraft have disrupted the normally sleepy airport at Kupang, the capital of West Timor. Giant Hercules planes have been arriving from Dili, bringing Indonesian soldiers and riot police, vehicles and equipment. ...."

The Arkansas Times 9/17/99 Mara Leveritt ".... Maybe I've missed it, but since the outbreak of violence that's wracked East Timor since its vote on Aug. 30 for independence from Indonesia, I haven't seen any mention, even in the local media, of the peculiar link we in Arkansas have to this poor and tiny half-island a few hundred miles north of Australia. ....... The ones I recall link us, not to the dead and displaced in East Timor, but to the powers-that-be in Jakarta, who have controlled the military forces occupying East Timor. In the past two weeks, those forces have stood by, doing little to stop the violence, as militiamen opposed to East Timor's independence have killed, burned, and looted, in this latest rage for ethnic cleansing. For decades, the United States has also failed East Timor, in its quest to be free. Our links have been far closer to the country that, under Suharto, resolutely denied that freedom. Those links have been built on money. And in the past two decades, they have wound tightly through Arkansas. They connect the corporate family of Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian billionaire, with the banking family of Arkansas's Jack Stephens, with the political family of Arkansas's former governor, now President Bill Clinton. It was Stephens who, in the early 1980s, introduced Clinton to the Riadys, reportedly over a lunch of corn bread and grits. Mochtar Riady is a Jakarta businessman who built a financial empire known as the Lippo Group. Based in Jakarta, Lippo today lists assets worth billions of dollars, spread across Hong Kong, Indonesia, and China. Because of his financial influence, Riady is deeply embedded in the politics of Indonesia and south Asia. And, because he sees his empire as global, he has cultivated the connections he made in Arkansas -- especially the political ones.

Clinton's connections to Riady span most of the era since 1975, when Indonesia invaded East Timor, killing approximately 200,000 people -- a third of the nation's population -- and subjecting it to Jakarta's rule. Riady, meanwhile, was also reaching out.......The Riadys' kindnesses have not stopped with money. Lippo has hosted several events for U.S. trade groups traveling in Jakarta, and, in early 1993, James Riady arranged for Mark Grobmyer, a Little Rock lawyer and longtime friend of Clinton, to spend more than an hour with then-President Suharto. The Riadys were of even more assistance to another of Clinton's Little Rock friends, Hillary Clinton's former law partner, Webster Hubbell. After Hubbell resigned from the Justice Department amid allegations of fraud, Lippo hired him, paying him a reported $250,000, to do work that has never been fully described. What is known is that James Riady arranged for Hubbell to tour Indonesia, making sure that he, like Grobmyer, visited East Timor. Human rights groups saw the visits as attempts by Suharto's political and financial allies to counteract long-standing reports of human rights abuses in East Timor by Indonesian forces. The White House has reciprocated the Riadys' courtesies. James Riady has visited the White House at least 20 times since Clinton moved there in 1992. On at least three of those occasions, he met privately with the president. Did any of this friendliness between Washington and Jakarta affect the fate of East Timor? The question, unfortunately, would be easier to answer if it didn't involve so much cash...."

South China Morning Post 9/18/99 Agencies "....Thousands of United Nations peacekeepers were poised to move into East Timor last night as Indonesian soldiers streamed out of the violence-plagued territory. With Jakarta preparing to end a quarter of a century of often brutal occup