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 occupation, international aid began reaching hundreds of thousands of starving refugees. But pro-Jakarta militiamen said they were ready to kill members of the UN force, which is expected to begin arriving from the north Australian city of Darwin today. Timoran Resistance National Council leader Leandro Isaac told Lisbon's TSF Radio Indonesian soldiers and militiamen were laying mines in Dili as they streamed south out of the province towards Dare, where tens of thousands of displaced civilians have taken refuge. ...."

http://www.newsday.com/ap/rnmpin0c.htm 9/18/99 AP "....Amid the roaring engines of military transport planes, a team of 13 U.S. Marines walked across a runway in Australia Saturday, the first to arrive in a contingent of American forces that will participate in an international mission in East Timor. The Marines arrived aboard a C-130 transport plane at the air force base in Darwin, the northern coastal city which is the staging area for the peacekeeping mission....."

The Nation 9/20/99 Allan Nairn "… Adm. Dennis Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in Liquiça, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquiça, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new US assistance. According to the cable, which was drafted by Col. Joseph Daves, US military attaché in Jakarta, Admiral Blair "told the armed forces chief that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper role as a leader in the region….." Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite significant, because it would be the first new US training program for the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite….."

The Nation 9/20/99 Allan Nairn "…When word got back to the State Department that Blair had said these things in a meeting, an "eyes only" cable was dispatched from the State Department to Ambassador Stapleton Roy at the embassy in Jakarta. The thrust of this cable was that what Blair had done was unacceptable and that it must be reversed. As a result of that cable from Washington to Roy, a corrective phone call was arranged between General Wiranto and Admiral Blair. That call took place on April 18. I have the official report on that phone call, which was written by Blair's aide, Lieut. Col. Tom Sidwell. According to the account of the call and according to US military officials I spoke to, once again Blair failed to tell Wiranto to shut the militias down. In fact, Blair instead permitted Wiranto to make, in essence, a political speech saying the same thing he had said before. ….At no point did Blair demand that the militias be shut down, and in fact this call was followed by escalating militia violence and increases in concrete, new US military assistance to Indonesia, including the sending in of a US Air Force trainer just weeks ago to train the Indonesian Air Force…."

BBC 9/20/99 "....United Nations peacekeeping troops are discovering a scorched earth policy in East Timor as they move into the territory. Correspondents say pro-Jakarta militiamen are torching the homes of those who supported independence. Flames can be seen rising from at least two Dili neighbourhoods, turning the night sky bright orange. And there are reports of numerous fires burning around Liquisa, 30km (20 miles) south of Dili, apparently started in the past few hours. Militiamen had promised to turn Dili into a ''sea of fire'' if the East Timorese voted to split from Indonesia in last month's referendum. BBC correspondent Ben Brown says the situation is similar to Kosovo when Serbs fleeing the province destroyed buildings rather than leave them behind for their enemies. The port in Dili is also packed with people who supported the militias and are now desperately trying to get out of the territory. Like the Serbs in Kosovo, they fear that in defeat they will become targets for revenge. ..."

Associated Press via canoe.com 9/21/99 Geoff Spencer "....Tanks, trucks and armored personnel carriers rumbled off warships in Dili today as international forces took control of East Timor. Jubilant citizens cheered the peacekeepers and mocked the demoralized Indonesian troops. Australian soldiers took over warehouses pillaged by militia gangs and their Indonesian army backers, while other troops arrested gangmembers, stripped them of machetes and homemade guns. In Dili, hundreds of refugees streamed out of the hills where they had sought refuge, returning to watch the U.N.-mandated force, which first began arriving Monday, take control of the charred capital after the militias' three-week campaign of terror. With 24 years of iron-fisted Indonesian rule ending, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie urged lawmakers in Jakarta today to accept East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence in an Aug. 30 referendum. He said acceptance would help restore the country's international image. ...."

Time 9/27/99 Charles Krauthammer "....Why did the U.S. go to war over Kosovo but not East Timor? Yes, Australian and other troops are going into Timor, ferried and supported by the U.S. military. But the difference with Kosovo is striking: *The peacekeepers did not bomb their way into Timor as they did in Kosovo. They waited for permission from Jakarta. *Before intervening in Kosovo, the West had championed the case of the Kosovars. The Rambouillet peace conference tried to force Belgrade to turn Kosovo over to NATO. East Timor, on the other hand, has been championed by no one. Bill Clinton is the fifth consecutive American President to ignore its struggle for independence. It was the Indonesians themselves who set the current train of events into motion by unexpectedly allowing a referendum on independence. *There will be no American infantry in Timor. The U.S. will help others go in. But we will not be baby-sitting the Timorese as we are the Kosovars. Why the extraordinary American exertions for Kosovo and not East Timor? ..... The answer has nothing to do with the strategic importance of the victim and everything to do with the strategic importance of the victimizer: Serbia does not count for us. Indonesia does. We blithely bombed our way into Yugoslavia because the country we needed to bludgeon is of no strategic significance. We did not bomb our way into Indonesia because that country is of immense strategic significance...."

Sydney Morning Herald 9/22/99 Lindsay Murdoch "... The Australian troops in Dili are taking a tough stand. Yesterday four manned a machine-gun on a jeep leading the convoy along the winding mountain road to Dare, expecting to be stopped at militia checkpoints. But the militia fled when they saw the heavily armed troops. "We will be going through any roadblocks," an officer of the elite SAS squad told journalists in the convoy. A few militia thugs are still parading around Dili, brandishing automatic rifles and knives, but now the streets are not theirs...."

BBC 9/22/99 "....A BBC correspondent was shown what appeared to be a torture and execution centre where up to 30 victims were killed then beheaded and dismembered before their bodies were thrown into a well. The discovery came as international peacekeeping troops pushed further into the devastated territory and militia groups stepped up their activities. The mutilated body of Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes, who worked for the London Financial Times, was found on the outskirts of Dili on Wednesday - apparently murdered by the militias....."

BBC 9/23/99 ".... Scores were injured as riot police and students clashed Police and demonstrators have been involved in violent clashes on the streets of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, with several injuries reported. Warning shots and tear gas were fired at several thousand demonstrators in clashes that began in the early afternoon and went on into the evening. The demonstrators, mainly students, were marching against a new state security law giving the military wider powers. Injuries have been reported on both sides, with a number of students reportedly being rushed to hospital with bullet wounds....... The demonstrators - some armed with sticks - smashed and burned at least two vehicles, one of them military. They taunted the troops and police with anti-army songs. Some banners proclaimed that President BJ Habibie and the army commander General Wiranto were equal disasters for Indonesia...."

Wall Street Journal 9/21/99 Alam Kuperman "...Australian peacekeeping troops are already on the ground in East Timor but the debate over responsibility for the recent atrocities there continues to simmer. Human-rights groups blame 25 years of Western coddling of Indonesia. If only the U.S. had applied more pressure on Jakarta, they say, the violence could have been avoided. The reality, however, is almost exactly the opposite. Today's suffering in East Timor is a direct result of too much Western human-rights pressure without any precautions against the tragic, and predictable, backlash. This lesson should have been learned in Rwanda. In the early 1990s, the international community applied intense diplomatic pressure on Rwanda's Hutu government to share power with Tutsi rebels. Threatening to cut off aid, the West compelled the Hutu president to sign an agreement to hand over power. But the West could not compel the Rwandan president and his cronies to honor the pact, which would have cost them the benefits of rule and left them vulnerable to retribution from new leaders. Instead, Hutu extremists decided to retain power by killing the opposition and its civilian supporters. In three months, at least a half-million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed--more than 100 times the number of civilian victims in the two decades prior to Western meddling. Militias and extremist soldiers led the killing. Many in the Hutu army initially stayed neutral, but as fighting continued they too inevitably sided against the Tutsis. The United Nations withdrew its peacekeepers and returned only after the killing was over. The parallels in East Timor are chilling....... After the Cold War, however, the U.S. began applying human-rights conditionality over East Timor, including suspending military cooperation with Jakarta. Pressure grew in 1996, after Timorese independence leaders won the Nobel Peace Prize and became media darlings. In 1997 the Asian financial crisis increased Indonesia's need for aid and thereby boosted Western leverage. Finally, this year, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie relented, agreeing to hold a referendum in East Timor and to accept last month's vote for independence. As in Rwanda, however, the ruling elite in East Timor (transplanted Indonesians and their local allies) had much to lose and much to fear if they handed over power, so they chose to resist with deadly force. Militias spearheaded the violence, and the army predictably sided with its long-time allies. The U.N. withdrew, and peacekeepers are being sent only now that the blitzkrieg of killing, ethnic cleansing and looting is mostly complete. As in most recent cases--including Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Rwanda--the bulk of the latest violence in East Timor was perpetrated in a matter of days, long before an adequate force of peacekeepers could arrive. ...."

Toronto Sun 9/19/99 Eric Margolis "....The brutality of Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor became an international cause celebre primarily because its independence-seekers are mostly Catholics, while Indonesia and anti-independence East Timorese are Muslims. However, this simple Christians vs. Muslims passion play is clouded by the awkward facts that the recent Indonesian Army commander in East Timor was Christian, that people of West Timor appear content under Indonesian rule, and that many orthodox Muslims don't even consider Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim state, to be truly Muslim at all. The East Timor uprising also became a hot crusade of the New Left: East Timor's bearded, black-bereted Marxist rebels were depicted as romantic, anti-imperialist heirs of the martyred communist saint, Che Guevara, battling the army of capitalist, pro-western Indonesia. As a result, the U.S. and Australia encouraged Indonesia to hold on to East Timor lest it become the Cuba of East Asia......"

The Times of India, via News Plus 9/20/99 "....Indonesian military forces linked to the violence in East Timor were trained in the United States under a covert programme sponsored by the Clinton administration, the Observer newspaper reported here Sunday. The newspaper also said London had spent around one million pounds training more than 50 members of the Indonesian military in Britain. Human rights campaigners claim a number of those trained in Britain and the US are likely to have links with those involved in atrocities against supporters of independence in East Timor. The US programme, codenamed Iron Balance, was hidden from legislators and the public when Congress curbed the official schooling of Indonesia's army after a massacre in 1991, the newspaper said. It said the programme continued until last year. ...."

Roll Call 9/20/99 Morton Kondracke "...Australian-led troops are on the way to East Timor, but the place already has been ravaged by pro-Indonesian militias. In the process, the so-called Clinton Doctrine has proved to be empty talk. President Clinton enunciated the doctrine in June in the aftermath of NATO's success in driving Serbian forces from Kosovo. "Whether within or beyond the borders of a country, if the world community has the power to stop it, we have to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing," Clinton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "That is what we did, but it took too long in doing in Bosnia. That is what we did or are doing in Kosovo. That is what we failed to do in Rwanda, where so many died so quickly. And what I hope very much we'll be able to do in Africa if it ever happens again." Well, it has happened again, both in Africa and Asia -- in Sierra Leone, Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Angola and now East Timor. The good news is that in some places there has been some international response. The bad news is that hundreds of thousands have died and even when international intervention has occurred, it's been late. It remains to be seen whether the slaughter can be stopped permanently. The real Clinton Doctrine seems to be: If the world media make it impossible for the U.S. government to ignore a massacre, this country may take action -- slowly. In East Timor, the Clinton administration hesitated to get involved -- much as it did in Rwanda in 1994, when up to one million people were butchered with the civilized world looking the other way.....Meantime, blood has been flowing all over Africa -- most of it out of the view of the world media. Nigeria-led forces have put a temporary stop to hand-chopping in Sierra Leone. There is a fragile cease-fire in Congo, but civil war and famine rage on in Angola and Sudan and 10,000 soldiers can be killed in a weekend of trench warfare between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is not up to the United States to be the world's police force, but if Clinton is going to assert a U.S. "doctrine" to stop ethnic massacres, then he ought to see that regional police forces are organized, trained and ready to stop bloodshed early. If the United States can't do better than it did in East Timor, Clinton should just quit saying "never again." He doesn't mean it....."

The New Zealand Herald Online 9/21/99 Yoke Har Lee "….Political cronyism in Indonesia won't disappear overnight but a lot of pressure is being placed on the system to ensure Indonesia does not repeat its history of corruption, according to James Riady, one of the country's business leaders…… Indonesian investors are mainly interested in New Zealand's forestry, fisheries and agricultural sectors but Mr Riady said he had at the moment no plans for new investments here. Mr Riady's father, Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian of Chinese descent, fought alongside the nationalist guerrillas against the Dutch colonialists. The elder Riady was expelled but later returned to build Lippo into an Asian empire. Lippo's multibillion dollar assets include businesses in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. The group also once owned a bank in Little Rock, Arkansas, from where the Riadys came to befriend President Bill Clinton and later donate funds to the Democratic party. The ensuing scandal that erupted has caught world media attention in what is now known as Donorgate. The Lippo group, according to financial analysts, escaped the worst of the Asian financial collapse thanks to raising money to repay its US dollar debts just prior to the collapse. ….."

The New Zealand Herald Online 9/21/99 Yoke Har Lee "….Mr Riady said the Lippo group went into the crisis with only US$200 million in debts which have since been reduced to zero. He also dismissed links with the Suharto era saying that the Lippo went into business with a focus on market. "We don't do government business, we have no joint ventures with the government. We are in retailing and in retailing, you don't sell to the government," he said in a wide ranging interview. ….."

AFP 9/25/99 Ian Timberlake "…Multinational troops raided pro-Jakarta militias and coped with a hostile Indonesian withdrawal Saturday, trying to keep order before gaining control of East Timor Monday. The peacekeepers tightened their grip on the feared militia gangs with heavily armed sweeps of the capital, but indicated Indonesian police were allowing those captured in the raids to go free. Armoured personnel carriers patrolled the streets of Dili during the hunt, protected by helicopters hovering overhead, as the international troops flushed out those responsible for the destruction of the territory. But a spokesman for the International Force in East Timor (Interfet) indicated the soldiers' hands were tied in trying to prevent the militia from getting back on the streets and continuing to terrorise the community. ….."

The Australian 9/27/99 Peter Alford "….AUSTRALIAN peace enforcers have called for the immediate deployment of UN forensic teams in East Timor as evidence emerged yesterday of summary executions and torture in the territory. The bodies of two men one shot in the head, the other stabbed in the throat were exhumed at the weekend in Tibur, 50km west of the capital Dili, as the UN East Timor mission launched its first atrocity investigation since the peace force landed a week ago. The discovery was made as Australian soldiers found evidence of torture in an abandoned Indonesian military barracks in the capital. Indonesian forces, withdrawing ahead of today's deadline for the handover to the multinational force, had left behind a primitive electric shock device two metal spoons taped to a stick with their ends connected to two electrical wires running to 220-volt wall-socket. ….."

The Guardian (UK) 6/1/99 John Pilger "…Blair makes much of 'humanitarian values' but sells arms to Indonesia which are used against East Timor. 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. …."

The Associated Press, via News Plus 9/27/99 "…. Two missionary nuns were among nine people killed by gunmen in the latest attack on Roman Catholic clergy in East Timor, church officials said Monday. A news agency reported that as many as 16 people died in the attack. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Baucau, East Timor's second-largest town, told Portuguese state radio RDP the attack took place Saturday on a rural road as the group was returning from Los Palos, 18 miles to the east…."

Washington Post 10/6/99 Colum Lynch "...Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the U.N. Security Council today to accelerate the hand-over of authority in East Timor from an Australian-led force to a U.N. peacekeeping mission, which could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs for the United States. The cost of the approximately 8,000 troops now patrolling East Timor is being paid by the countries that contributed them, with Australia bearing the largest burden and the United States a relatively small one. Annan asked for Security Council approval to replace that force with 8,950 U.N. peacekeepers funded according to the United Nations's standard formula, which requires the United States to pay 31 percent....."

Associated Press via canoe.com 10/4/99 Slovodan Lekic "....Stung by criticism of alleged bias, the commander of the international peacekeeping force in East Timor demanded today that pro-independence rebels hand in their weapons. "The policy is that we disarm any East Timorese who are not in TNI ... we disarm them all," Maj. Gen. Peter Cosgrove said. TNI is the acronym for the Indonesian army, which has retained two infantry battalions in East Timor after evacuating most of its forces from the territory. Pro-Jakarta militias, along with Indonesian media and officials, have accused the peacekeepers of a bias toward independence supporters, including the Falintil rebel group, which has battled Indonesian rule since 1975. ....."

Washington Post 10/5/99 Keith Richburg "....More than two weeks into a military operation aimed at bringing security and much needed relief supplies to tiny, devastated East Timor, aid agency officials and military commanders are stumped by a perplexing question: Where are the people? As Australian troops have pushed into the territory's far western district, securing the border town of Balugade and the onetime pro-Indonesian militia stronghold of Balibo, they have encountered only a handful of people--at most, about two dozen refugees who have crossed the border into Indonesia proper to scavenge for food. Here in Balibo, once home to 15,000 people, they found exactly one local resident--an elderly woman, believed to be deaf, who was left behind when the rest of the town fled. Many people from the western districts of East Timor, and from the capital, Dili, were moved by force or by fear across the border into western Timor, in Indonesia, by violence that followed an Aug. 30 vote on East Timor's independence. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other aid groups have estimated that more than 200,000 East Timorese may now be in western Timor, and they fear that many are being held against their will by militias opposing East Timorese independence. But East Timor had a pre-crisis population of 850,000 people. Even accounting for the possibility that 200,000 or more refugees are in western Timor doesn't resolve the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of thousands more......"

AP via canoe.com 10/5/99 Slobodan Lekic "....Devastation and empty streets greeted international peacekeepers when they arrived in East Timor. Now, two weeks later, people are returning to their burned-out homes and aid is starting to reach the countryside. It has been a mission without bloodshed, a multinational deployment that has occurred at remarkable speed compared with similar operations elsewhere in the world. "This marriage of humanitarian and security forces moving hand-in-glove and reaching out to the people is quite exceptional," said Michel Barton, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian aid coordination office. "This could be a significant turning point in terms of future operations of this type." The peacekeepers have established their presence in about two-thirds of East Timor, and commanders say they will have the whole region covered in the "very near future." ...."

NewsMax,com/Inside cover 10/5/99 Carl Limbacher ".....Britain's Guardian reports that "Indonesian military forces linked to the carnage in East Timor were trained in the United States under a covert program sponsored by the Clinton administration that continued until last year." The U.S.-based East Timor Action Network and Illinois Congressman Lane Evans have released Pentagon documents that show the U.S. provided "military expertise that could only be used internally against civilians, such as urban guerilla warfare, surveillance, counter-intelligence, sniper marksmanship and 'psychological operations.'" ...."

Associated Press 10/5/99 "....The State Department is urging U.S. citizens to defer nonemergency travel to Indonesia and says those who travel to that country should exercise extreme caution. In a travel warning dated Monday, the department reminded potential travelers that demonstrations have occurred in Jakarta and on all major islands. ``In some areas, violence has been directed at American businesses,'' it said. It added that popular demonstrations against the Indonesian government are growing in frequency....."

Stratfor 10/6/99 "....Indonesia s armed forces want to explore military ties with China possibly to procure arms and spare parts, according to an upcoming Far Eastern Economic Review report. A close aide to Indonesian President B.J. Habibie said the overtures to China came after the cancellation of the Indonesian-Australian defense agreement. Whether or not the overtures occurred, the threat of Indonesian-Chinese ties will provoke heightened concern over Southeast Asia, possibly forcing a U.S. policy decision. Improving military ties is a very rational move for both Indonesia and China. Souring relations with the West mean Jakarta is losing its arms sources. The Australia-Indonesia defense pact and arms sales were shattered by tension between the two nations. Likewise, the United States suspended arms sales in September. China, however, will supply Indonesia with weaponry, without dictating Indonesia s internal policies. ...."

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/timor991013.html 10/13/99 Andi Jatmiko "...Dozens of anti-independence militiamen who fled East Timor are secretly returning with plans to launch a guerrilla campaign against the international peacekeepers charged with keeping them out. The Associated Press accompanied a militia leader and his armed followers through the mountainous interior of the half-island territory this week. The Australian-led multinational force has clashed with, and killed, several militiamen in the past week. "We are East Timorese. Why are [the peacekeepers] trying to keep me out of East Timor?" militia leader Eurico Guterres asked Tuesday. "This is the place where I was born. I will fight to be in my own land, my own place." The peacekeepers were deployed on Sept. 20 after the Indonesian army and its militia allies unleashed a wave of killings following an overwhelming vote for independence by East Timor's 850,000 people in a U.N.-sponsored referendum....."

AFP 10/13/99 "....No evidence has yet been unearthed of large-scale mass killings in East Timor during the pro-Jakarta militia rampage here, a UN official said Wednesday. "We have not found evidence of massacres so far," said Michel Barton, spokesman for the UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance (OHCA). "In most cases when we hear horrendous stories of huge massacres, we may find two or three bodies buried," Barton said....."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/15/045r-101599-idx.html 10/15/99 Keith Richburg "...Outside the Indonesian parliament, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets tonight against thousands of protesters hurling rocks and molotov cocktails. Inside the chamber, the embattled B.J. Habibie fought to keep alive his hopes of retaining the presidency by mounting a marathon defense of his stormy 16-month term...."

South China Morning Post 10/11/99 Agencies "....An angry Indonesia yesterday said it would reinforce West Timor with hundreds of troops after a clash between its soldiers and United Nations peacekeepers on the border with East Timor. Jakarta accused the peacekeepers of sparking the incident, and Indonesian lawmakers told the military to shoot any foreign soldiers who crossed the border. The Indonesian regional military commander, Major-General Adam Damiri, said a battalion - between 700 and 1,000 men - would be sent to defend the border from "threats" by the International Force for East Timor (Interfet). Australian Prime Minister John Howard called for "urgent high-level discussion in Dili and Jakarta" to resolve the problem, which has emerged amid a serious chill in relations between the two neighbours over Australia's leadership of the force. "This incident is, I think, truly to be deplored," Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas said. ...."

New York Times 10/11/99 Philip Shenon "...The U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission here said Sunday that it would triple the number of its troops along the border with the Indonesian-controlled half of this island in an effort to thwart attacks by anti-independence militias based there. The expansion -- from 1,000 to nearly 3,000 Australian, New Zealand and British troops -- was announced after warnings that the militias were planning a new series of attacks on peacekeepers and on East Timorese civilians. The militias are reported to have established new headquarters and stored their arms there in recent weeks after fleeing East Timor as peacekeepers were arriving. ...."

Tampa Bay Online 10/11/99 AP "....Every morning, hundreds of East Timorese gather along Dili's harbor to watch U.S. helicopters roar off the deck of this 40,000-ton carrier, the biggest in the peacekeeping force. ...... The USS Belleau Wood helicopter carrier and its sophisticated equipment have a key role in the peacekeeping operation. More than 900 U.S. sailors and 900 U.S. Marines are on board,hidden below deck can be called into action if peacekeepers on shore are hit by an emergency. For some on board, such a low-key role isn't easy. ``We're not used to that,'' said Maj. Rick Long, a Marine Corps officer from Kansas City, Mo. ``But you have to be a good follower if you want to be a good leader.'' ``We're not here to cause trouble. We're not here to get into a fight,'' said Capt. Thomas A. Parker. ``We're here to help a peace mission.'' ...."

The Washington Times 10/10/99 Wesley Pruden "..... Nobody any longer cares where he goes, or what he does. A look at any front page tells the story: the Hot Springs Kid is stale bread. ......Not only is nobody any longer interested in who the doxy may be between the president's sheets, nobody's interested in the possibility -- nay, the probability -- of authentic outrage. What happened, for specific example, to persuade the government in Jakarta to believe that the United States would not intervene in East Timor, as it had in Kosovo, if Jakarta applied the boot to the throat of the rebels there? In the end the United Nations acted, but in the days just after the independence vote the Indonesian generals no doubt waited for a signal from Washington, or looked to see whether there would be a signal, to keep their hands off. After a brief pause following the voting, the killing began. The Clinton links to Indonesia are old and strong. You could ask Webb Hubbell. These are not golf links, but Mr. Clinton's other favorite links, the links of money, connecting Mr. Clinton to the generals through Mochtar Riady, the Indonesian billionaire, onetime Little Rock banker and sometime pal of Jack Stephens, the Little Rock investment mogul. (All roads lead through Little Rock.) ....But even better was yet to come. In 1991, Mr. Mochtar and executives and associates of his Lippo Group contributed nearly a million dollars to the Democratic National Committee (some of it was returned years later after a bedtime reading of U.S. laws governing foreigners and meddling in U.S. elections). Most important of all, it was Worthen Bank that advanced the Clinton campaign $4 million dollars just after the New Hampshire primary and the Gennifer Flowers contretemps in '92, when Mr. Clinton was broke and on the ropes. Soon after he was elected, Mr. Clinton dispatched Mark Grobmyer, a trusted Little Rock lawyer, son of an old Arkansas timber family and longtime pal, to Jakarta to spend an hour with President Suharto talking about whatever was on Mr. Suharto's mind. ....."

AFP 10/15/99 "…Iraq and Indonesia signed an agreement overnight to expand their economic cooperation, particularly in oil exploration, the official Iraqi news agency INA reported Friday. The accord was signed by the two countries' respective trade ministers, Mohamed Mahdi Saleh and Rahardi Ramelan, at the end of the fifth round of meetings of their joint economic commission. ..."

newsday.com 10/16/99 AP "….Peacekeepers battled with anti-independence attackers on East Timor for more than an hour Saturday, killing three of the militiamen and wounding three others, peacekeeping officials said. It was the Australian-led force's bloodiest clash since it was deployed on the embattled Indonesian island Sept. 20 to stop a rampage by Indonesian forces and their militant allies after the territory voted for independence….."

Washington Post 10/17/99 Rajiv Chandrasekaran "….When international peacekeepers landed here last month, the militiamen who opposed independence for East Timor mounted little resistance. Many retreated to the hills or over the border into Indonesian-controlled western Timor, allowing the peacekeepers to move quickly through the territory. Now, weeks after regrouping and reassessing the situation, militia members are becoming more confrontational, engaging in gun battles with patrolling soldiers and raising the prospect that the mission of the Australian-led force will be tougher ..."
Agence France-Presse 10/17/99 Himanto Suwastoyo "..... Indonesian President B.J. Habibie's political future hung in the balance Sunday after the national assembly heard a last-ditch attempt by the embattled leader to win a second term. After a televised speech by Habibie that included an apology to the nation for his shortcomings, the 700-member People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) formed a commission to determine whether to accept or reject a report of his past performance....."

Agence France-Presse 10/17/99 Martin Perry ".....The bloodiest clash yet between the multinational force in East Timor and pro-Jakarta miltia did not indicate that the militia was consolidating, a senior Australian officer said here Sunday. Despite being outnumbered four-to-one, Australian troops suffered no casualties in the clash Saturday near Marko, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Balibo, which left three militia dead and three wounded. The militia, numbering about 20 and armed with assault rifles, ambushed a five-man Australian reconnaissance patrol, triggering the clash, a spokesman for the International Force in East Timor (Interfet) said Saturday. ...."

BBC 10/17/99 ".....Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed says his country wants to command a United Nations peacekeeping force in East Timor. "We have done this in Somalia and we think we have enough experience," he told the Reuters news agency. "We have been very supportive of the UN, and I think we have a legitimate hope that we could be appointed as commander of the UN forces in East Timor." The UN peacekeepers will take over from the Australian-led International Force for East Timor (Interfet) once the Indonesian parliament ratifies the outcome of East Timor's August 30 vote for independence....."

AP 10/19/99 Laura King "....At the rate of 500 an hour, ragged refugees on foot poured into East Timor in the sweltering heat Tuesday, threatening to swamp aid agencies waiting to help them. Complicating matters, international peacekeepers were trying to screen the refugees coming from neighboring West Timor to block the re-entry of pro-Indonesian militiamen. West Timor is Indonesian territory. In Jakarta, Indonesia's top legislative body voted early Wednesday to recognize East Timor's independence, paving the way for the territory to become the world's newest nation...."

Washington Post 10/19/99 Rojiv Chandrasekaran "....As scores of weary, bedraggled Timorese men trudge down from the verdant hills that surround Maliana after a month in hiding, they are asking the same anguished question: Where are our families? The men, many of them supporters of independence for East Timor, had fled to the mountains early last month, seeking to escape anti-independence militias pillaging the countryside....."

Sydney Morning Herald 10/20/99 Mark Riley "....The birth of the world's newest nation has been a long and painful process, and East Timor faces an infancy filled with more challenges as it attempts to build an independent society from the ground up. The transition is expected to take anywhere between two and four years, during which the latest addition to the family of Asian sovereign states will remain under the foster care of the United Nations. It is a task the UN has undertaken many times before, most recently when Namibia was granted independence from South Africa in 1990. It is a task that requires a lot of money. It is certain that the final bill will run into the tens of billions of dollars. The first step - Indonesia's parliament formally relinquishing all claims to sovereignty over the territory - was expected last night or today....."

The New York Post 10/20/99 AP "...Abdurrahman Wahid was elected Wednesday as Indonesia's new president, inheriting the daunting tasks of restoring national unity and leading the world's fourth-biggest country out of its worst economic crisis in a generation. The historic vote by the 700-member People's Consultative Committee culminated a tumultuous 14-hour stretch in which incumbent President B.J. Habibie suffered a humiliating setback and subsequently pulled out of the race. The assembly backed Wahid over Megawati Sukarnoputri, the popular daughter of Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. ..."

The Australian 10/2/99 Don Greenlees "....INDONESIA will quickly enter negotiations on the transfer of power in East Timor to an interim UN administration after the historic decision to end its turbulent 24-year rule of the territory. But UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that the international community would have to carry a heavy burden during the transition to a democratically elected government in East Timor. "We are starting from scratch. The buildings have been destroyed. All the civil servants doctors, nurses who were Indonesians have left. So we need to bring in all the civil service, all the essential services to be able to manage the country," he said....."

Washington Post 10/21/99 Keith Richburg "....Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim leader who is frail and nearly blind, was elected Indonesia's fourth president today in a surprising vote by the People's Consultative Assembly. He rode to victory on the strength of an unlikely coalition of Islamic conservatives and the long-ruling Golkar party of former president Suharto...... Immediately after the presidential vote, thousands of Megawati's bitterly disappointed supporters took to the streets of the capital in angry protest, hurling molotov cocktails and setting fire to the Jakarta Convention Center...... His Islamic supporters may see his election as a chance to impose more religion on the secular politics of Indonesia -- the world's largest Muslim nation -- and he must deal with a military establishment that remains powerful in this nascent democracy. In addition, he will be working without a firm base in the newly assertive legislature; his National Awakening Party placed fourth in the June elections, and today he needed votes from the discredited Golkar party to win the presidency. ...."

Washington Post 10/22/99 Rajiv Chandrasekaran "....It was here on Sept. 6, at a Roman Catholic compound comprising the cathedral, Our Lady of Fatima Church and several other buildings, that survivors say a throng of pro-Indonesia militiamen engaged in one of the bloodiest acts of retribution against the people of East Timor, who days earlier had voted to secede from Indonesia. Armed with assault rifles, machetes and hand grenades, the militia members set upon independence supporters inside the compound, raping dozens of women and slaughtering more than 100 people, including three priests, according to the survivors....... But despite all the indications of a mass killing here, Australian army investigators with an international peacekeeping force have run into an unusual hurdle in trying to determine exactly what happened -- a lack of bodies......."

Pacific Stars and Stripes 10/28/99 AP "…The United Nations formally assumed control of East Timor on Tuesday, a key step in the devastated territory's transition to independence after nearly a quarter-century of Indonesian rule. The U.N. transition team acknowledged it faces huge challenges as the international community moves from keeping the peace to rebuilding a society ravaged by violence that broke out last month following East Timor's independence referendum. In the wake of a rampage by pro-Indonesian militiamen, more than 400,000 East Timorese - half the population - are still displaced..."

International Herald Tribune 10/27/99 Paul Dibb Peter Prince ".....With relations between Australia and Indonesia at their lowest level for more than three decades, the selection of Abdurrahman Wahid as the new Indonesian president and the ratification of East Timor's independence by Indonesia's top legislative body offer the chance to move forward. This will determine whether Southeast Asia and Australia can work together in the new millennium.. ..."

Hong Kong Standard AFP 10/27/99 "….Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said yesterday he was making China the destination of his first overseas state visit because of Beijing's ``consistent support'' for Indonesia in international diplomacy. Beijing promptly reacted by saying that China welcomed Mr Wahid's planned visit and called on Indonesia to play a positive and important role in regional affairs….."

Washington Times 11/9/99 Ben Barber "....US. and other estimates that 100,000 or more people were slaughtered in Kosovo and in East Timor have turned out to be grossly inflated -- by as much as 900 percent -- according to humanitarian and government officials. The inflated death estimates were issued in the fog of war, when access to battlefields and killing grounds was impossible and refugee accounts could not be verified. So estimates of the numbers killed were made by multiplying a small number of convincing accounts or verifiable killings, said experts and government officials. Some suggest that the inflated body counts were politically motivated -- intended to drum up public support for NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia ....."

UPI Wire 11/8/99 "….More than half a million people swept through the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province Monday in support of a self-determination referendum in the staunchly Muslim region. Protestors in hundreds of trucks and buses and on motorcycles converged on Banda Aceh's main Baiturrahman mosque, and filled the streets around the regional Parliament office. Aceh, an oil-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra island, has been locked in a decade-long struggle for independence that has left more than 2,600 people dead and at least 3,800 others missing...."

BBC 11/3/99 Catherine Napier "….Twenty-four years after Indonesia invaded East Timor, the final soldiers have left, slipping out under cover of darkness in ignominious retreat. They leave behind a territory in ruins, destroyed in a last desperate act of revenge after the Timorese voted for independence and an end to Indonesian rule. Now both sides must count the cost: an estimated 200,000 East Timorese dead from war, famine and disease in the years directly following the invasion in 1975 hundreds more killed, disappeared, tortured and dispossessed under Indonesia's military occupation and, in the past few months, two-thirds of the population terrorised and forced to flee under an army-backed reign of terror aimed at spoiling the UN supervised referendum. No one knows how many were killed, or how many will live out the rest of their lives in exile, forced to resettle in Indonesia….."

Reuters 11/30/99 "….About 50 students from Irian Jaya province demanded independence from Indonesia on Tuesday in a demonstration outside Jakarta's presidential palace. Pro-independence groups in Irian Jaya, which normally refer to the region as West Papua, plan a mass demonstration of support for independence in the province on Wednesday. The province is on the western half of New Guinea island. East Timor resistance hero Xanana Gusmao was due at the palace later in the afternoon to meet President Abdurrahman Wahid….."

FOX News 12/8/99 AP ".... Indonesia's fragile economy would collapse and most executives would end up behind bars if the new reformist government launched a crackdown on corruption, the senior economics minister said today. Speaking to lawmakers, Economics and Industry Minister Kwik Kian Gie said the government was torn between its duty to punish wrongdoers and its determination to foster recovery from the worst economic crisis in decades. If the government prosecutes all corruption cases, "economic activity will grind to a halt, as most business people will be in jail,'' he said. "This is a dilemma that the government is facing.'' Kwik said he discussed the problem with the International Monetary Fund. But even its officials could offer no solutions and admitted that it would be bad for the economy to pursue everyone who had indulged in corruption in the past. Indonesia is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world....."

Associated Press 12/28/99 "….Rival mobs of Muslims and Christians clashed in Indonesia's troubled Spice Islands on Monday, killing at least 42 people, witnesses said. In a separate clash, three separatists were killed by security forces in restive Aceh province, Indonesian media reported. The main church in the Spice Island provincial capital of Ambon was set on fire along with a mosque. Medical authorities said 29 people had died on the Muslim side and 13 among the Christians, bringing the toll to 42. Initial reports said 39 had died. ... "

CNSNews.com 1/7/00 Patrick Goodenough "….Tens of thousands of Indonesian Muslims demonstrated in Jakarta Friday, calling for jihad (holy war) against Christians in the country's conflict-torn Spice Islands. Clashes between minority Christians and Muslims in the Moluccas (Moluku) islands have cost thousands of lives since the beginning of last year. Christian groups last week called on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to end the carnage in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Amid reports that the warring parties are receiving help from outside, Indonesian Navy warships and aircraft have blockaded the islands to prevent unauthorized vessels from entering the area...."

AP Breaking News 1/7/00 Ali Kotarumalos "….About 80,000 Muslims protested in the capital today, threatening to declare a holy war in defense of Islam if the government doesn't halt religious fighting in the country's eastern islands that has left nearly 1,000 dead in past weeks. Across the street from the presidential palace, the demonstrators waved hundreds of banners reading "We are ready to die in defense of Maluku Muslims" and "Stop the killings of Muslims." Those in the crowd chanted "Jihad", or "Holy War," and "Allah Akbar," or "God is Great." The rally, held after morning prayers at Jakarta's National Monument Square, followed a series of smaller protests by Muslims in the capital in recent days. Police estimated that 80,000 people had gathered in the vast park. By the government's count, about 990 people have died in fighting between Christians and Muslims during the past two weeks in Maluku and North Maluku provinces, some 1,600 miles northeast of Jakarta. The country's security forces have deployed thousands of troops to the islands, and officials say the violence has subsided in recent days. The two provinces of Maluku and North Maluku, known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule, have been wracked by fighting between Muslims and Christian mobs for the past year. About 1,800 people have been killed since the violence began, according to government estimates. ….An influx of Muslims from Indonesia's other islands over the past two decades has changed the religious makeup of the provinces, where the Christians used to have a small majority. Almost 90 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslims. Analysts have warned that if the violence does not end soon, it could engulf other parts of the country….."

CNN 1/6/00 "….Thousands of Indonesian Muslims marched through Jakarta Thursday chanting "Jihad! Jihad!" (holy war) in a protest against minority Christians, while additional police and troops were sent to try to halt the religious unrest in Ambon. The nearly 5,000 protesters, most wearing traditional white Muslim clothes, slaughtered a goat, smeared the blood on a wooden cross and demanded a holy war against Christians in the Moluccas……"

WorldNetDaily.com 1/2000 Charles Smith "….Documents provided by the U.S Commerce Department indicate that Lippo business partner Edison Mission Energy received strong Clinton administration support for the multi-billion dollar Paiton project. One 1994 document notes that "with its state-of-the-art emissions-control technology and by using low-sulfur Indonesian coal, the project will be one of the cleanest, most efficient coal-fired facilities in the world." The Lippo conglomerate is currently the only global supplier of low-sulfur 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, giving the Lippo group a monopoly in the only other clean-burning coal deposits -- located inside Indonesia….."

WorldNetDaily.com 1/2000 Charles Smith "….The Indonesian auditor said its bribery allegation was based on the finding of $22.23 million of funds listed as "Project Development Costs" in Paiton Energy's 1994 financial report. The auditor said it couldn't find any explanation of the item, although the amount was more than 50 percent of the company's total assets. "We believe that the consortium or Paiton Energy Corp. covered information on expenditures related to speedy-money or bribery," the agency said…."

WorldNetDaily.com 1/2000 Charles Smith "….According to a 1998 article published in the Wall Street Journal, "Wasted Energy" by Peter Waldman and Jay Solomon, the international team of advisors was "shut out" by senior Indonesian officials who ordered the consultants to "stop reviewing fuel costs." "We were slapped back so fast our heads were spinning," stated a Lazard Freres advisor. The Indonesian government auditor's report was the first to review the accusations against Paiton I and the other 25 power projects. The audit recommends that the Indonesian attorney general investigate everyone involved in negotiating the contract….."

BBC 1/20/2000 "…. Thousands of people have been fleeing religious and ethnic violence on the Indonesian island of Lombok. The situation is currently reported to be calmer, but members of Christian and Chinese minority communities have been evacuated under military escort. Large numbers of Indonesian troops and police are patrolling the streets of the island's capital, Mataram. Sporadic clashes were reported on Wednesday night, despite police threats to shoot rioters on sight after more than three days of violence. Muslim gangs torched and looted premises and homes owned by Christians, Hindus and ethnic Chinese. They are reported to have lists of Christian and Chinese-owned properties which they are methodically destroying….."

South China Morning Post 2/3/2000 Joanna Jolly "….The United Nations is searching 29 grave sites in an area of the East Timorese enclave of Oecussi where witnesses say 75 people were massacred. Searchers so far have found 10 bodies in an operation that began on Monday and is expected to last a week. Two Australian forensic experts have joined UN civilian police, the International Force for East Timor (Interfet) and locals in digging up the graves outside Passabe, a town near the border with Indonesian West Timor. Oecussi saw some of the worst violence carried out by the Indonesian military and pro-Jakarta militias after the the UN-sponsored independence ballot on August 30. Human rights groups said 80 per cent of the population were forced to move from Oecussi to West Timor and have documented 90 confirmed killings in the enclave. The graves are believed to contain villagers from Oecussi who were killed by militiamen on September 9. ….."

USA Today 2/3/2000 Freeper Marathon "....When Ba Thin joined up in 1949, the ethnic Karen minority's war for freedom from the country then known as Burma looked like it would be short. Battle-hardened Karen fighters, who had helped colonial ruler Britain fight Japanese troops in World War II, had pushed the post-independence Burmese army to the capital, Rangoon, and looked set to carve out an independent state. More than half-a-century later, only the dwindling numbers of Ba Thin's generation can remember the scent of victory. With Karen forces facing annihilation from the ever-more powerful government army, the situation has become so desperate that perhaps 200 fighters have turned for leadership to twin 12-year-old boys leading a faction called God's Army. The future of the Karens - who account for 7% of Myanmar's 48 million people - may rest in the hands of Ba Thin, 73, who was elected president of the main rebel group, the Karen National Union, in a congress last week. Ba Thin's accession amounted to a tacit admission of the obvious - the war is all but lost...... In the early 1990s, the government orchestrated a split in the group, bringing Buddhist Karens disaffected with the mostly Christian leaders under its control. The pro-government Democratic Karen Buddhist Army has been an instrument of terror, raiding refugee camps in Thailand sheltering more than 100,000 refugees from Myanmar, mostly Karen civilians...... I came away from Burma believing the Karen to be beautiful, friendly people who just want to be left alone and free in their jungle communities. They would be content to eke out a living through subsistence farming while raising their children according to their centuries-old, tribal lifeways. But SLORC and world-class bastards like Gen. Kyi Aung have other plans. Lt. Col. Thomas Thang No took over as acting Chairman of the Chin National Front, which is continuing to fight an armed struggle against the SLORC in the Chin hills. Some Christian children have been taken to Rangoon with the promise of a free education. Once they arrive in Rangoon they are forced to become novice [Buddhist?] monks and nuns, and officials attempt to Burmanize them. In the Chin hills, like elsewhere in the border regions of Burma, people are tortured, arrested, and jailed for suspected rebel allegiances, property is looted by SLORC troops, villagers are taken as porters and slave laborers, and the ethnic minorities are treated with great condescension by SLORC officers. ....... "

South China Morning Post 2/1/2000 Vaudine England "..... The naming of top Indonesian generals as responsible for terror and destruction in East Timor came amid pressure for action and rumours of a military coup against President Abdurrahman Wahid's Government. The outside world, represented by the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, is fighting to establish a global principle that human rights abuses must be paid for. Within Indonesia, the mood is more complex. Even among those Indonesians who deplore the violence in East Timor after it chose independence on August 30, the notion that Indonesians would be judged by non-Indonesians is unacceptable. The members of the Indonesian inquiry had to be strong enough to forestall any international humiliation, but sensitive enough to avert any crisis in the local power struggle between the Government and armed forces....."

South China Morning Post 1/27/2000 Vaudine England "…..Investigations into the killing sprees which followed East Timor's vote for independence will be completed this weekend, but the prosecution of generals named by the Indonesian inquiry team could take another six months, human rights experts said. The Indonesian inquiry was also frustrated, the experts said, by the unwillingness of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (Untaet) to allow the Indonesians access to documentation about hundreds of cases, which could weaken the inquiry's ability to haul generals into court. ……The Indonesian inquiry has already announced its belief that senior generals, starting with former armed forces chief and now cabinet member General Wiranto, are responsible for the orgy of destruction and death in East Timor….."

South China Morning Post 1/27/2000 AP "….Indonesia's president began an ambitious 16-day foreign tour on Friday, leaving his untested vice-president to cope with rising violence and rumours of a military coup. Before departing, President Abdurrahman Wahid said he had entrusted full authority to his deputy, Megawati Sukarnoputri, despite growing scepticism about her ability to govern. ''Whatever necessary policies she will take in security and other fields is up to her,'' Mr Wahid said. ''Nothing is hidden between me and her.'' ..."

Indian Express 1/31/2000 "..... AMBON: Indonesian's top general in the embattled Muluku Islands has said four soldiers were involved in the massacre of 24 Christian civilians on the Island of Haruku last week. General Max Tamaela told Indonesian Television here yesterday that armed forces (TNI) investigators on Saturday uncovered evidence that soldiers on Haruku assisted several thousand Muslim residents of neighbouring villages in the attack on the main Christian town of the same name, reports DPA. In addition to the four serving members of the army, a police officer is also under suspicion, he said. ''I'm a little bit surprised about his comments, yes,'' said Rev. Jack Manuputty, a member of a now-defunct Christian-Indonesian Reconciliation Task Force, and part-time resident of Haruku. ''But he has to make a further investigation into who directed them, who was the one who gave the orders. I don't believe they acted on their own initiative. The people there, the victims, deserve to know who was behind the action.'' ....."

UN 1/28/2000 "…..The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) has increased the presence of its international police force in key areas of East Timor, following recent violent incidents. The UNTAET Civilian Police (CIVPOL), which helps maintain law and order, has boosted patrols in Dili, Becora and Bairro Pite, and fifty CIVPOL officers are being trained and equipped to deal with public disorder until a Rapid Response Unit is in place in early March. All CIVPOL officers have been instructed to confiscate on the spot any weapon carried without a justifiable reason. With the scheduled arrival of 255 additional men, the number of international civilian policemen in East Timor will jump to 632 by 15 February….."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=002098248308973&rtmo=kLL1xxop&atmo=kkkkkkGu&pg=/et/00/1/27/windo27. 1/27/2000 Alex Spillius "….SCORES of Christians were slaughtered by Muslims at an Indonesian factory, according to survivors of one of the bloodiest incidents in a month of sectarian violence that has claimed 1,000 lives and challenged the country's fragile democracy. Yoke Pauno, a 37-year-old labourer, escaped after hiding for nine hours. She said: "Some men asked a woman if she was Muslim or Christian. She said 'Christian' and they struck her on the right shoulder with a sword. They killed her and the baby she was carrying." Mrs Pauno was one of four known to have survived a massacre in the managers' quarters of Wainibe Wood Industry on Buru island. Police said 100 people died in the systematic massacre which began on Dec 22 and lasted into the next day. Their figures were based on interviews with the survivors at refugee camps last week in Ambon, capital of the eastern Maluku province, formerly the Moluccas……"

World Net Daily 1/24/2000 Anthony C LoBaido "….Father Ricardo walked gingerly across the charred remains of a church that recently was torched by a band of Muslim fanatics. In a macabre scene, burned pews, crushed stained glass windows, tattered vestments, a communion chalice and a few torn pages from a hymnal dotted the floor. "It's a nightmare. My Lord, when is it going to stop? Where is this all going to lead?" he said softly again and again, in great despair. Indeed, post-dictatorship Indonesia's stab at democracy -- after having been ruled by either a left-wing or right-wing strongman for decades --is in great peril, with Christian-Muslim violence continually festering here in the capital of Jakarta….. Recently over 500,000 Muslims gathered in the capitol to call for a "jihad" against Christian Indonesians. Chanting "Allah Akbar," or "God is Great," and "Jihad!" and "Death to all Christians," the Muslims marched under the watchful eye of their own green-clad security men. "Tolerance is nonsense. Slaughter the Christians," read a large banner that was unfurled at the rally, witnessed by WorldNetDaily. Chants of "Burn the churches!" and "Death to the Crusaders" filled the air. Father Ricardo said that Muslim vigilantes attacked and burned down the entire campus of Doulos Seminary. Many of the 400 students there were wounded, and a few died……..Muslims threatened further vigilante action around Indonesia at the end of Ramadan. The Islamic Teachers Council of Indonesia wrote a letter to the attorney general of Indonesia asserting that Christian organizations are "conducting illegal activities" such as "Christianizing Muslims," even though freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Indonesian Constitution……"

South China Morning Post 1/25/2000 AP "…. Beijing said it will donate 50 million yuan (HK$ 44 million) in aid this year for reconstruction in East Timor, as part of a good neighbour policy toward the former Dutch. Visiting East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao said East Timor would follow a ''one China policy,'' indicating he favours establishing diplomatic ties with China instead of Taiwan. Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan thanked Mr Gusmao for his comments. Mr Tang and Mr Gusmao agreed on promoting relations between China and East Timor in the future. Mr Tang said Beijing was ''delighted'' East Timor had stabilised and that its transition to independence was on track, Xinhua (the New China News Agency) said. …"

Inside China Today 1/24/2000 AFP "…. East Timorese independence leader Xanana Gusmao arrived in China Monday for four days of talks with senior Chinese leaders, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Gusmao was to hold a first round of talks Monday with Shi Guangsheng, minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation, followed by a meeting and dinner with Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan. The people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia in a UN-sponsored vote in August. The territory is currently being run by an interim United Nations administration which will pave the way for full independence in around three years time. Gusmao led the Falintil guerrilla force resisting Indonesian rule and was jailed in 1991. He was released after the August ballot and is widely expected to become the new nation's first president. In a rare move for Beijing, 10 Chinese police officers arrived in East Timor last week to join the UN transitional authority in the territory, and more are expected to follow in the near future….."

United Nations 1/24/2000 "….The head of the United Nations administration in East Timor signed a regulation today establishing the US dollar as the official currency of that country, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) announced in Dili. According to the regulation adopted Saturday by the National Consultative Council (NCC), contracts between different parties may still be executed in other currencies, but compulsory payments to public authorities are to be paid in US dollars. During the transitional period, payments made with Indonesian rupiah will be accepted, but subjected to a transaction fee. …."

Whjte House 2/11/00 "…..Presidential Determination No. 2000-12……. Pursuant to the authority vested in me as President, including under sections 10(d)(1) and 10(a)(2)(B) of the United Nations Participation Act of 1945, as amended (22 U.S.C. 287 et seq.) (the "Act"), I hereby: (a) determine that the deployment of United States military forces to support East Timor's transition to independence without reimbursement from the United Nations is important to the security interests of the United States; and (b) delegate to you the authority contained in section 10(d)(1) of the Act with respect to assistance to support East Timor's transition to independence that is covered by section 10 of the Act. You are authorized and directed to report this determination to the Congress and to arrange for its publication in the Federal Register. …."

Freeper abwehr 2/16/00 "……Jim Guy Tucker sold his previous cable company to this guy: PRESS RELEASE 4/27/99 "…..Marc Nathanson, chairman of Falcon Cable TV, was sworn in on March 8, 1999 as Chairman of US International Broadcasting Agency by Vice President Al Gore in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, as his wife Jane looks on. The US International Broadcasting Agency, oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio/TV Marti. ….. Multipolar. that name rings a bell. Sukamto Sia I believe. Son in law of a major Indonesian business family. Involved in bribing the Hawaiian speaker of the House or Senate president a couple of years ago. Also was Tomy Winarta's partner in a company called Transmarco. Winarta came up last week in reference to the Clinton fundraising scandal. Believe it was his money that reimbursed Ching Hai ……There was a bit of a scandal as well over a satellite deal involving these players. Called Indostar it was supposed to provide TVRO signals to Indonesia. What was cute was a minority owned business (CTA)in the US got the contract to build it, though they had no satellite experience but the president of CTA made a large DNC donation. After getting the contract they of course sold it to Orbital I believe it was. ……..Sia has come upon hard times though. Last time I looked he had been arrested in Las Vegas after running up, and I kid you not, some $25 million plus in gaming debts at casinos there. Bounced a check for something like $6 million! ...,,:

South China Morning Post 2/18/00 "….. Secretary General Kofi Annan's rapturous welcome in East Timor may buy time for the United Nations, which is coming under increased criticism for lack of progress there. His reception shows that the organisation still has the respect of the people it helped to liberate, but the euphoria has gone. The focus has shifted to rebuilding from the ruins, and kick-starting an economy in what was once the poorest state in Indonesia. Expectations are high, but the new realities are harsh. Promised funding remains tied up in red tape. There is a lack of co-ordination between aid agencies. The contrast between the comfortable situation in which aid workers operate, and the daily struggle for survival that is still the lot of most East Timorese, creates depression and discontent. With no homes, no jobs, no transport, young people in particular are frustrated to see non-governmental organisation staff driving between towns in land cruisers, eating at restaurants set up by off-shore businessmen, while they are left with nothing to do, and no immediate prospect of self-improvement. ……"

The Straits Times Interactive 2/20/00 Washington Post "…..The Defence Department has quietly resumed training Indonesian military officers in the United States, restoring one element of its relationship with Jakarta that was suspended last year after Indonesian soldiers participated in the violence in East Timor. While the programme is small -- involving only seven officers -- US officials said it was restarted without fanfare to avoid criticism from Capitol Hill and rights groups which argue that Jakarta-backed militias are still discouraging refugees from returning to East Timor. US officials stressed that they have not resumed full military-to-military relations and warned that the training will not be continued if Indonesia's military does not deal with the refugee problem and other issues actively. ….."

London Times 2/18/00 Richard Beeston "….. JAMES WOLFENSOHN, the President of the World Bank, flew into a potentially embarrassing political storm in Indonesia yesterday after claims that loans from his institution were used by Jakarta to fund brutal militias in East Timor. An Australian documentary said it had unearthed evidence that about £500,000, earmarked for welfare and development, had been directly used to suppress the independence movement in East Timor. The Dateline report, on Australia's government-funded SBS, claimed that the official financing of the pro-Jakarta militias was initiated after a dinner a year ago hosted by Yunus Yosfiah, the Minister for Information. ..."

South China Morning Post 2/16/00 Vaudine England "…..The Indonesian Government diverted millions of dollars in World Bank aid money to finance the establishment of the militia groups that laid waste to East Timor last year, Australian television claims. Two of the sources used in the TV report, former militia leader Thomas Goncalves and former double agent Rui Lopes, told the South China Morning Post last September of the meetings and planning that went into the militia violence. Mark Davis, of TV channel SBS' Dateline programme, went to the East Timorese capital, Dili, to find the bureaucrats responsible for distributing the cheques. The programme shows the head of the Dili budget section of the Department of Finance, Joao da Silva, searching through his wrecked offices and finding cheque stubs, including one for nine billion rupiah (HK$9 million) directed through the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Joao da Silva also confirms money from the transmigration department was given to militia groups," the Dateline show says. …."

The Business Times/Singapore 2/14/00 Shoeb Kagda "….INDONESIA'S Lippo group is forging ahead after having formed a strategic alliance with Hongkong's Hutchison Whampoa group for its push to create the largest Internet empire in the country. It has secured an additional US$100 million (S$166 million) commitment from Taiwan's China Development and Investment Bank group (CDIB) for its drive, sources in Jakarta told BT…….. The deal was concluded by Lippo's founder and patriarch Mochtar Riady, who is also in negotiations with two other Taiwanese IT powerhouses -- the Hwashin Group and Acer. …… Separately, BT understands that US-based financial giant American Insurance Group (AIG) is looking to increase its 5 per cent stake in Lippo e-Net, formerly known as Lippo Life. …… Lippo e-Net will act as the umbrella company coordinating not only the investments and strategic alliances, but also the dovetailing of the group's existing businesses with its new empire. As part of its efforts to speed up the laying of the broad band cable infrastructure in the greater Jakarta area, for example, Lippo has tied up with Hutchison Whampoa and is in negotiations to sell as much as 20 per cent of Multipolar. The Hongkong-based telecommunications giant is also said to be helping the group develop its wireless calling card facility. The Riadys have also brought in American Jim Guy Tucker, a specialist in broadband cable TV, to spearhead the group's entry into this field. The former Arkansas governor, who used to own cable companies in the US, is a technical adviser in the group's subsidiary KableVision, which will offer Internet access through television sets. ….."

Guardian (UK) 3/11/00 John Aglionby "…..When Mohammed Assegaf and his two friends finished describing how Indonesian soldiers had killed some people and terrorised dozens of others in their part of Aceh province during the past two months, they slipped out of the café's back door, across the paddy fields, and away. Outside the front door were three heavily armed plainclothes policemen demanding to know what was going on. People active in criticising the authorities or promoting the idea that Aceh - and its natural wealth - should break away from Indonesia risk arrest, or worse. Such intimidation is commonplace now in this resource-rich province at the north-western tip of Sumatra. ….."

AP 2/28/00 Haris Syamaun "…. Facing massive economic, social and political problems, Indonesia's reformist president today appointed former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a political adviser.Kissinger said he would confer with President Abdurrahman Wahid at least once a year on political and social policy for the world's fourth most populous nation. "I responded to the request of the president out of friendship for the Indonesian people and the importance I attach to the Indonesia nation," Kissinger told reporters after the meeting. "I would like Indonesia to be strong, unified and democratic." …."

Stratfor 3/28/00 "……Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has proposed breaking his country's reliance on the United States for military equipment. He proposed that instead the domestic defense industry expand along with a network of international suppliers. Wahid appears to be seeking leverage for an upcoming visit to Washington. But his stance opens up new opportunities for other suppliers, notably Russia and China. Wahid accurately assumes that Indonesia is vital to U.S. security concerns; he may be mistaken, however, in his belief that Washington will simply watch Jakarta's military enter into new strategic partnerships….."

Sydney Morning Herald 4/13/00 david Lague "…… An independent East Timor would have a powerful legal case to renegotiate the Timor Gap treaty and win a bigger share of potentially massive oil and gas revenues, according to legal and oil industry experts. The terms of the controversial treaty between Australia and Indonesia carving up the seabed oil and gas have continued under an interim arrangement with the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor, but a new government in Dili would have the right to renegotiate its ocean boundary with Australia. There are potentially billions of dollars in revenue at stake for an impoverished East Timor. Since the treaty was signed in 1989, it has become accepted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that the exclusive economic zone boundary between two states that are less than 400 nautical miles apart should be the mid-line between their coasts. ……"

Islamic Views 4/6/00 AFP "….Thousands of Muslims, many in white robes and carrying swords, rallied in a central Jakarta stadium Thursday to support the launching of a Jihad against Christians in the troubled Maluku islands this month. The mass rally, staged by the radical Forum Communication Ahlus Sullah Wal Jama'ah, drew some 10,000 people to the Senayan sports stadium. About 800 police stood at the ready outside. Forum leader Ayip Syafruddin, addressing the crowd from a podium draped with the national red and white flag, said 10,000 Muslim youths were ready to embark on a Jihad this month. "We will be deploying our Jihad groups to the Malukus in April," Syafruddin said to cheers from the crowd, most of them men. "Those who have been prepared are youth groups. They number around 10,000 people and they will be deployed all over the Malukus and surrounding islands." He said funds for the Jihad "to break the rebellious movement of the Maluku Christians" had come from "Muslims within and outside the country" but gave no hint as to the source of the outside funding. ........."

Independent Online 5/1/00 "......Fancy enjoying the tropical sun on your own deserted island? Indonesia may soon lease some of its 10 000 uninhabited islands to raise much-needed cash and help its economic recovery. Maritime Exploration Minister Sarwono Kusumaatmaja said on Monday the government was studying the viability of cashing in on unused islands across the vast archipelago of more than 17 000 islands stretching 5 000km along the equator. "(It) could be for the purpose of using an island as a resort or other purposes, but we have to work out the terms and conditions," he told reporters. ....."

The Voice of the Martyrs, Canada 6/14/00 Rev John Barr "…..The quest for peace in Ambon is all but lost. Hope is dying as the world stands by and the Maluku Islands of Indonesia are plunged further into a crisis of violence and bloodshed. Words are running out to adequately describe the situation. There is a war going on to the immediate north of Australia and it's obscene. Thousands of Muslim Jihad militia continue to raid the area, slaughtering communities and driving tens of thousands of Christians out. "Ambon is under siege" cried one informant. "Muslim Jihad militia have smuggled container loads of firearms into the region and are now preparing to launch a major assault on Ambon city. We are sitting targets. Our families will be killed. There will be no Christians left in Ambon soon." ……"There's a price of fifty million rupiah (about $A.10,000) on the heads of all my ministers and there's a much higher price on my head". Rev Agustinus Aesh, Moderator of the Evangelical Christian Church in Halmahera was speaking with me in Jakarta recently. "My people are being targeted. Thousands of Muslim Jihad militia continue to raid my island and drive the Christians out", Aesh said. "There is no end to the violence. The Christian church is being wiped out." ......"

Fox News Online 6/4/00 "…..A great earthquake, capable of causing massive damage, struck Sunday off the Indonesian island Sumatra, and the U.S. Geological Survey said it was likely to have caused a tsunami. The survey's Carolyn Bell said the quake was measured at magnitude 7.9 and occurred at 11:28 p.m. local time, or 12:28 p.m. EDT. The shock was felt strongly at Benjkulu, 70 miles north-northeast of the epicenter, where it could have caused "major structural damage," she said. It also was felt as far away as Jakarta, the capital, 335 miles north-northwest of the center. Bell said the epicenter was 33 kilometers - almost 20 1/2 miles - beneath the Earth's surface, very shallow in geological terms. ….."

AP 6/5/00 Geoff Spencer "….. Plunged into darkness and shaken by relentless aftershocks, tens of thousands of Indonesians spent Monday night outdoors, afraid to return to their shattered homes after a powerful earthquake rocked Sumatra island. Officials said at least 58 people were killed and more than 500 injured by Sunday night's magnitude 7.9 quake. ……. Eleven minutes after the main quake, a magnitude 6 tremor struck, and more than 260 aftershocks followed Monday. …….. The quake was felt across much of western half of the archipelago nation. People in the neighboring island state of Singapore fled their apartments after high-rise buildings swayed. ...... The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., said the quake's epicenter was about 201/2 miles beneath the floor of the Indian Ocean - very shallow in geological terms. But there was no report of a tsunami, a massive wave caused by an earthquake or volcanic eruption. In December 1992, a magnitude 7 earthquake caused a tsunami that killed about 2,500 people on the southeastern island of Flores. ……"

BBC 7/8/00 "….Muslim fighters are waging a 'holy war' in the Moluccas At least 22 people have been killed in attacks on a mainly Christian village in the Moluccan Islands, in eastern Indonesia. Hundreds of Muslim fighters armed with mortars, grenades and rifles are reported to have carried out the raids on Waai village, near the Moluccan capital Ambon. The well-co-ordinated assault, which came from three directions, started on Thursday, and was renewed on Friday night. ……… A spokesman for the Christian community has accused the Indonesian army of doing nothing to halt the violence. Almost 60 people were wounded in the attack, while hundreds of homes, a church and other buildings were burnt down. Several thousand villagers fled into the surrounding jungle. …….."

AP 7/9/00 Slobodan Lekic "…..Church leaders in Indonesia's war-torn Maluku islands urged the international community Saturday to help evacuate thousands of Christians from the archipelago due to a sharp upsurge in attacks by Muslim paramilitaries. Jos Tethool, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop in Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, said the army "seems unable" to stop attacks on Muslim by Laskar Jihad - an armed Muslim militia whose leaders have vowed to cleanse the islands of Christians. The group, which sent 3,000 members into the region earlier this year, has been blamed for much of the recent carnage. ….."

The Toronto Star 6/28/00 CP "….. JAKARTA, Indonesia (CP) - Fighting between Christians and Muslims has trapped tens of thousands of terrified villagers across the Molucca islands in makeshift camps where vital supplies were running low, aid workers said today. ……A state of emergency declared by the national government two days ago has failed to halt the sectarian violence and revenge. Rival gangs also defied a nighttime curfew declared Tuesday. ……Residents said the full street battles that raged for the past week had subsided, but mortar explosions and gunfire echoed across the battle-scarred city of Ambon every few minutes. …..Many houses have been burned, and both Christians and Muslims have taken shelter in police stations, schools, mosques or churches. ……. On June 19, more than 100 people - mostly Christians - were killed during a battle in a village in the north of the region, known as the Moluccas or Spice Islands during Dutch colonial days. ……"

The Times 6/21/00 Catherine Philp "…… MORE than 100 people have been killed in the worst single outbreak of violence in 18 months of religious conflict in Indonesia's northern Molucca Islands. The 108 Christians and eight Muslims were reported dead after an hour-long battle in the village of Duma on the mainly Christian island of Halmahera. Dozens more were seriously injured in the fighting, which subsided only after soldiers intervened belatedly to evacuate survivors. …….. Local residents said that the fighting broke out when Islamic fighters attacked Christian homes with guns and homemade bombs. ……."

The Straits Times 6/20/00 "….. Embattled former Indonesian president Suharto, under investigation for graft, may hand over US$25 billion (S$43 billion) to the government, President Abdurrahman Wahid has said. Speaking to reporters in Egypt during a visit, he said that although the courts would decide how much Mr Suharto should return to the state, he expects at least US$25 billion. ""At least around US$25 billion, but how much further is the limit I don't know,'' he said in Cairo, where he is attending a G-15 summit. The comments by the Indonesian leader, who did not explain how he arrived at the US$25 billion figure, came several days after he offered immunity to Mr Suharto if he and his family returned some of their wealth to the government. Mr Suharto and his family are accused of corruptly amassing a multi-billion dollar fortune during his 32-year rule. All have denied any wrongdoing. ….."

Reuters 7/16/00"……. At least 21 people died in fighting between Christians and Moslems in Indonesia's ravaged spice islands as the latest bloodshed entered its fourth day, with at least 14 deaths reported on Saturday alone. Residents said gunshots and explosions echoed across the once-picturesque harbourside city of Ambon on Sunday and thick piles of smoke choked the air as mobs rampaged and torched buildings. "A church was burned down yesterday and the Moslems are still on a rampage attacking Christian villages," Semmy Waileruny..."

New York Times 8/10/00 Seth Mydans "..... Battered by a hostile Parliament for his haphazard management style, President Abdurrahman Wahid said today that he would hand over daily government administration to Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri. His announcement came after raucous attacks on Tuesday in a legislature where he can count on the support of only a small minority and where some members have called for his impeachment.

"Regarding the criticisms of my style of management, I can understand them, and I will assign the vice president to handle the daily tasks of management, to draw up the cabinet's working agenda and to establish the focus and priorities of government," Mr. Wahid said. ....."

Miami Herald Online 8/6/00 AP "….Forced to flee their homes by rampaging Muslim militants, hundreds of Christian refugees seeking shelter in remote mountains in the Malukus islands are facing starvation, international aid workers said Saturday. With no food or medicine and a lack of water, about 1,500 refugees are trying to survive in the islands' jungle-covered mountains, said Maria Teresa Vilhena of the emergency relief agency, Doctors Without Borders. ``We have a high emergency situation here,'' said Vilhena, from Switzerland. ``Some people are already dying in the jungle.''…….Most of the refugees come from Waai village, which has been the target of several raids by Muslim militants recently. At least 38 people were killed in and around the village this past week. ……… Animosity has been stoked by an influx of Muslim migrants from other parts of the country. The migrants have upset the numerical balance between the two communities and have come to dominate retail trading -- siphoning off business from the Christians. ….."

6/12/00 Don Groves Lippo Group wires up Indonesia's cable biz. (Brief Article) "….. JAKARTA Indonesia's long-stalled cable industry is getting a massive boost from Kabelvision, which is controlled by one of the country's richest congloms, the Lippo Group. Kabelvision CEO Jim Guy Tucker is planning to accelerate its building program, create local channels and introduce a raft of services including pay-per-view and video-on-demand. A former Arkansas governor who had 17 years experience in the U.S. cable business, Tucker was recruited last year by Lippo chairman James Riady after Lippo bought a controlling share of Kabelvision from Datakom, which owns the sole direct-to-home operator Indovision. …… Tucker also has informed U.S. distribs, whom he met at the L.A. Screenings, that he intends to launch a DTH service and to buy a terrestrial network (presumably one of the existing five channels, which have all been looking for investors, or one of the five licensees that are due to go to air over the next 12 months)……"

International Herald Tribune 8/12/00 Rajiv Chandrasekaran "….Militia groups with ties to the Indonesian military have sneaked into East Timor and are carrying out a series of increasingly bold attacks on UN peacekeepers in the newly independent nation, UN officials and Western diplomats said Friday. The assaults, which have resulted in the deaths of two peacekeepers in the past three weeks, have heightened tensions along the rugged, 160-kilometer (100-mile) border separating UN-controlled East Timor from Indonesian-controlled West Timor. The escalating violence is also complicating efforts to send home more than 100,000 East Timorese refugees from squalid camps in West Timor and is raising the prospect that an international security force will have to remain in East Timor for longer than planned to control the militias, which oppose the territory's independence from Indonesia. ……"

Daily Telegraph 9/14/00 Chris McCall "….. AT least 15 people were killed when a car bomb exploded at the Jakarta stock exchange yesterday. Dozens were injured and the blast raised fresh fears for the stability of Indonesia. The bomb went off in an underground car park, setting the building ablaze for several hours and sending smoke billowing into the surrounding area. The exchange, in the centre of the capital, is one of the region's largest. There were fears that the number of dead could rise steeply as rescue workers brought the remains of the victims up one by one from the smoke-filled car park of the 36-storey building. "There are still plenty of bodies down there," a police officer said. ……"

Independent Newspapers LTD 9/8/00 "…… The horror of the West Timor attack is plain. Four United Nations workers hacked and burned to death by a machete-wielding mob, dozens of other peacekeepers hiding in fear of their lives, and the whole UN operation driven out of the territory. But some good could flow from the outrage, says The Press in an editorial. ……"

Daily Telegraph 9/11/00 Alex Spillius "….. THOUSANDS of refugees from East Timor left helpless in Indonesian West Timor by the evacuation of all international aid workers are running out of food, United Nations officials said yesterday. About 400 aid workers were forced to flee by the brutal murder last week of three people working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. They were hacked to death by militia opposed to independence for East Timor. ……."

AP 9/13/00 "….. Indonesia is considering buying Russian military aircraft for the first time since 1965, sidestepping a U.S. arms embargo, officials said Tuesday. Navy chief Adm. Achmad Sutjipto said his service wants four Mil-17 helicopters to deploy marines to the country's trouble spots. ``It's impossible to get them from America,'' Sutjipto said late Monday, according to the state Antara news agency. ``I notice that Russia is most prepared to (provide them).'' Western nations, particularly the United States, have supplied military equipment to Indonesia in the past. But those countries embargoed weapons supplies to Jakarta after army-inspired violence last year in East Timor, a formerly Indonesian-ruled territory that had just voted for independence. ……"

New York Times 8/22/00 Seth Mydans "……The Associated Press …… Top military commanders have won a skirmish in Parliament to slow their retreat from political influence. At the same time, they seem to be losing control of many of their troops in the field. Since the forced resignation in May 1998 of President Suharto, who used the army to enforce his dictatorship, the military has given ground steadily to an overwhelming nationwide demand for its withdrawal from politics. But without the strong control of Mr. Suharto, military experts -- as well as Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono -- warn that in some places the chain of command has broken down. As a result, some rogue units are fighting their own small wars and pursuing their own economic interests. With the close of a special parliamentary session last week, attention focused on a back-room maneuver by the military's legislative bloc that allowed it to hang on to a few of its allotted seats for an extra five years, until 2009. ……"

Cato Institute 9/18/00 "...... Defense Secretary William Cohen is due to meet Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid today to deliver a stern warning over Jakarta's failure to rein in militias that recently killed three U.N. aid workers, according to Reuters. On his arrival on Sunday, Cohen said Jakarta risked "international isolation" if it failed to disband the pro-Jakarta East Timorese militias now operating in Indonesian West Timor. ......."

AP 9/18/00 Geoff Spencer "……An hour before meeting the U.S. Defense secretary on Monday, Indonesia's president announced the dismissal of the national police chief for failing to arrest the youngest son of former President Suharto. In firing Gen. Rusdihardjo, President Abdurrahman Wahid alluded to a series of bombings, including one that killed 15 people beneath the Jakarta Stock Exchange. "Recent security developments require changes," Wahid told reporters. After their hour-long meeting, Defense Secretary William Cohen warned of possible economic sanctions against Indonesia unless army-sponsored militias are disbanded on the divided island of Timor. Cohen said President Clinton was disappointed that Jakarta had done little to rein in the thugs who killed an American and two other U.N. aid workers in West Timor on Sept. 6. ……."

EWTN 12/27/00 "......Christians are forced to undergo circumcision with razor blades and some women made to marry Muslims, according to sources in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, and in the capital of the troubled Moluccas province, Ambon.The sources said that Muslims are brutalizing Christians on the island of Keswui and Teor, Central Moluccas, southwest of Seram Island.Sources close to the Indonesian Bishops' Conference said that it is not easy to quantify the cases of violence......"

The New York Times via The AP 12/25/00 ".....Bombs exploded outside churches in Jakarta and five other Indonesian cities and towns tonight, killing at least 10 people, wounding dozens and worsening the already difficult relations between the nation's Muslims and Christians. The blasts, including one outside Jakarta's main Roman Catholic church, happened as Christmas Eve prayer services were about to begin. The explosions set cars on fire and damaged some churches. ......There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but religious violence has been rising throughout this predominantly Muslim country. Although most of the recent violence has taken place in the Molucca Islands, Muslim vigilante groups have recently attacked restaurants and nightclubs in Jakarta, the capital. ....."

The Hindu 11/5/00 Amit Baruah "….. THE WORLD'S largest democracy and the world's largest Muslim nation are having problems. The United States, which has had a long and cosy relationship with dictators and dictatorship in Indonesia, is having a hard time coming to terms with Indonesia's struggling, year-old democracy. …….Indonesia, in a sense, is an example in moderation. Its President, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim cleric, is an intellectual and stands against the forces of extremism. At a time when the United States is fighting battles against the likes of Osama bin Laden all over the world, Indonesia should be considered an automatic friend, a ``natural ally'' for the U.S. But that has not happened. Instead, over the last few weeks U.S.- Indonesian relations have been on the downturn, with the American Ambassador, Mr. Robert Gelbard, in the eye of the storm....... A vicious war of words has broken out between Mr. Gelbard and several key Ministers in the Government, particularly the Defence Minister, Mr. Mohammad Mahfud. The American Embassy is closed; it could re-open but the downturn in relations has seen a number of threats being made to the mission. ……"

UPI 10/30/00 Sukino Harisumarto "…..In the wake of reported threats to American tourists posed by Muslim radicals, the State Department announced Monday that the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia will continue the current closure of visa services and other public functions through Tuesday……. Embassy services were originally suspended last Tuesday by Ambassador Robert Gelbard after U.S. officials received information of an unspecified threat to American interests in that east Asian state, which has been racked by economic and political turmoil in recent years. U.S. officials decided to continue the closure in the wake of reports that more than 100 young militants Sunday stormed a hotel in Solo, located 300 miles southeast of Jakarta, searching for American citizens. The youths were affiliated with Brigade Hezbollah and Laskar Jundallah, radical groups which issued an ultimatum over the weekend demanding Americans leave Indonesia within 48 hours and urging hotels to reject American guests……."

NewsRoll 10/29/00 "......JAKARTA, Oct 27 (Oana-Xinhua) -- A U.S. destroyer of Spurance class equipped with long-range missile Tomahawk has been driven away by Indonesian warships from the Maluku waters, the Antara News Agency Friday quoted a navy officer as saying. Chief of the security task force for the Indonesian eastern region Commodore Djoko Sumaryono said the U.S. warship was apprehended by Indonesian warships KRI Rencong and KRI Pandrong on the Laut Seram and Laut Buru waters on October 21 as it gave no explanation on its intention to pass by the waters. "They only said they were exercising their right to pass by the Indonesian waters without providing further explanation," Sumaryono said. ......Antara reported that the U.S. warship's arrival was coinciding with the visit of U.S. Consul General Robert Polar to Ambon, capital of Maluku, to seek data on conflicts in the city. ....."