Asia Times: Speed is of the essence in East Timor



	October 02, 1999	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Speed is of the essence in East Timor
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The World Bank hopes to send a team to East Timor as early as mid-October to assess the needs of the population - the first step toward putting together a reconstruction and development program for the devastated territory.

Speaking after an informal meeting of donor countries and international agencies Wednesday, Klaus Rohland, the bank's country director for the Pacific Islands, said the World Bank and other donors will consult closely with the National Council of the Timorese Resistance (CNRT), at every step in the reconstruction process.

''There isn't much left in East Timor,'' he said, referring to the destruction wrought by pro-Indonesian militias and their Indonesian army sponsors after almost 80 percent of the population voted for independence from Indonesia.

''This will be a test case of donor coordination,'' he said, adding that plans drawn up by the bank earlier this year for working in East Timor had to be scrapped, given the extent of destruction that has taken place over the past several weeks.

As many as 600,000 of East Timor's pre-vote population of some 880,000 were uprooted by the violence which, most observers reported, was orchestrated by Indonesian forces. Estimates of the number of dead - many of them students and community leaders associated with the independence movement in East Timor - range as high as 7,000.

One of the poorest areas of East Asia, the territory's economy is mainly agricultural, with 90 percent of the population living in rural areas. Annual per capita income before last month's vote was estimated at less than $400, with about 50 percent of the population living at or below the poverty line.

Social and health indicators also presented a dismal picture: less than one-third of all households had access to potable water, and only 22 percent had electricity, according to the World Bank.

Those statistics would already present challenge enough to the bank and the international donor community, but the violence and destruction which followed the plebiscite will make reconstruction and development much more difficult.

Not only was most of the population now uprooted, but entire towns and villages were put to the torch. Given its low level of development and long history of foreign occupation, East Timor will be starting practically from nothing.

The bank and other donors have declined to discuss specific funding targets, although one UN estimate released this week found that some $135 million in humanitarian aid alone would be needed by East Timor over the next six months.

More specific funding targets must await the findings of the needs assessment mission, which will be led by Klaus Rohland. The IMF is also planning to send out a mission next month to begin discussing how new institutions, including a finance ministry, can be set up.

A formal donors' meeting - at which the bank will seek specific pledges - will take place after the initial assessments are completed, hopefully before the end of this year, according to the Bank's Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific, Jean-Michel Severino. ''We are all determined to get moving quickly,'' he said, ''to ensure that money and resources reach the people who need them, without delay.''

In recent years, Indonesia itself spent about $115 million annually on the territory. Of those expenses, which did not include tens of millions of dollars more in military costs, only about 15 percent was generated by economic activity inside East Timor.

Bank officials said they had little doubt that sufficient funds could be raised; as great a concern, they said, was the capacity of the East Timorese to absorb the aid as many basic services in recent years were run by Indonesians.

The informal donors' meeting, in which CNRT leader Xanana Gusmao also took part, came as the United States stepped up its warnings that it will not resume normal relations with Indonesia - including military sales and aid - until it reins in the militias and permits as many as 200,000 East Timorese expelled to Indonesian-controlled West Timor to return home.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly warned Jakarta that Washington will maintain its sanctions - including opposing non-humanitarian loans and credits from the bank and the IMF - unless the refugees currently held in West Timor are permitted to return.

The US also blamed the slaying last weekend of nine clergy and their staff in East Timor on the Indonesian army and called for Jakarta to bring those responsible to justice.

In Jakarta Thursday, Secretary of Defence William Cohen accused the Indonesian military of ''aiding and abetting'' the violence in east Timor and warned that the United States would not restore defence ties until the Indonesia army showed respect for human rights.

Cohen issued a written statement prasing the Indonesian military for its early support of the nation's transition to democracy. ''But in recent months, elements in the military have aided and abetted violence in East Timor,'' he said. Cohen demanded that Indonesian troops disarm the militias responsible for the violence in East Timor, and added they would do ''severe damage'' to the country if they did not. He spoke as the Australian-led peacekeeping force slowly continued extending its control of the territory beyond the capital, Dili.

Speaking after the bank meeting in Washington, Gusmao said his guerrilla units also were moving out of mountain redoubts, where they had harbored tens of thousands of people displaced by the militia violence, to assert their control in areas from which Indonesian soldiers had withdrawn.

Gusmao, who is considered likely to become the first president of East Timor, and the CNRT so far have gone along with the notion that an interim government established by the United Nations will be necessary for at least two to three years before East Timor can become fully independent. At the same time, they made clear they want a say in critical decisions over this time.

''We are pleased by the acknowledgement that the East Timorese people through the CNRT will always be consulted,'' said Jose Ramos-Horta, a co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize and the CNRT's de facto foreign minister.

In remarks to the donors, Gusmao himself laid out what he called ''the key principles of our vision for the future of East Timor''. Those included the establishment of a partnership with the international community for reconstruction, the development of ''new democratic processes . . . to build on the extraordinary mobilization of the population during the vote, [and] to ensure their participation does not stop there''.

In addition, he said, East Timor wanted a ''government which is clean and free of corruption'' and a development strategy ''to foster economic growth that will benefit the poor''.

''The meeting today and the proposed joint assessment mission,'' he went on, ''are the best of all possible starts to this process of reconstruction.''

Despite the Indonesian army's role in the recent destruction of the territory, Gusmao stressed Wednesday that he sought reconciliation. ''I believe that when two parties are willing to do something in the direction of harmony and peace, I believe it can happen,'' he said.

''They have an incredible readiness for reconciliation,'' Rohland confided to reporters about his discussions with Gusmao and other CNRT officials.

(Inter Press Service)

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©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.