Tuesday
May 10, 5:29 PM
AP
East Timor says it's willing
to wait 20 years for justice against Indonesian rights abuses
East Timor will wait patiently _ even if takes 20 years _ for Indonesian
military and militia members to be tried for human rights abuses
during the country's bloody break from Indonesia in 1999, its foreign
minister said
Tuesday.
Indonesia is in transition toward democracy, and opening old wounds
or pushing it too hard for reforms could destabilize the government
and push the country into the hands of Islamic radicals, East Timor's
Foreign
Minister Jose Ramos Horta told reporters during a visit to Malaysia.
Horta said the United States and other Western powers should also
be patient with Indonesia, and restore military ties with it to
improve its military's human rights performance through training.
"We have to sympathize and understand the difficulties of
those inside the country who are trying to change Indonesia. If
you push too hard and too fast, there can be nationalist and Islamic
backlash that ... will
destabilize the democratic government," said Horta, a Nobel
Peace Prize laureate.
After East Timor voted for independence under a 1999 U.N.-sponsored
referendum, Indonesia's military and its proxy militias went on
a rampage that left about 1,500 Timorese dead and displaced about
300,000 people.
East Timor's limited jurisdiction has failed to punish the perpetrators.
An Indonesian court charged 18 people with human rights crimes,
but 12 were acquitted and four had their sentences overturned on
appeal. Two other
appeals were pending.
