Dili, Jakarta officials meet to discuss Oecussi border tensions

Dili, Oct. 19 (Lusa) - The United Nations has organized a meeting Thursday in East Timor`s vulnerable Oecussi enclave for Dili and Jakarta officials to discuss tensions created by violent cross- border activities of former anti-independence militiamen.

Timor's foreign and interior ministers, José Ramos Horta and Rogério Lobato respectively, will hold talks with an official Indonesian delegation under the chair of the UN's special envoy to Dili, Sukehiro Hasegawa.

Ramos Horta told Lusa last week that constant smuggling activity around the Oecussi frontier by ex-militia gangs was "irritating" the Dili authorities, although not a cause of major security headaches to Timor's security forces.

The Timorese diplomat said a police border post had recently been destroyed by West Timor-based smuggling gangs, believed to mainly consist of anti-independence militias.

In an attempt to open dialog on the threat to security along Timor's border with West Timor, the UN organized a high-level meeting last week in the Passabe district, where "practical solutions were discussed" to overcome the current frontier difficulties.

Timor's police chief, Paulo Martins, represented Dili at this meeting with Jakarta's Dili ambassador, Ahmed Bey Sofwan, among senior Indonesian officials present.

A diplomatic source told Lusa that a senior Indonesian security officer proposed at the encounter that movement across the border should be temporarily suspended from both sides.

The same Jakarta official told the UN-brokered meeting that difficulties in the area in question were due to "a lack of understanding" among local populations over the provisional borders created by a bilateral accord on frontier delineation by Dili and Jakarta earlier this year.

Meanwhile, an Australian newspaper reported Thursday that the once notorious "Okto" militia has resurfaced in Timor and is behind the recent problems in the Oecussi border areas.

"The Australian" daily cited a UN communiqué from Sukehiro Hasegawa as saying Timorese police identified "uncontrolled people in the area including the Okto milita".

According to the article, Timorese police fired warning shots Oct. 4 to disperse a group of Indonesians who crossed 500 meters into Oecussi. Days later, machete-wielding militiamen torched crops while Indonesian border guards stood by.

Backed and armed by Indonesia`s military, pro-Jakarta militia gangs unleashed a deadly wave of violence before and after Timor's UN- backed independence vote in 1999.

In the ensuing carnage and destruction, over 1,500 Timorese lost their lives and more than 300,000 fled into West Timor.

About two-thirds of infrastructure in Timor was destroyed in the scorched-earth pull-out of Indonesian forces, assisted by their militia proxies, after the landslide vote to end Jakarta`s quarter- century occupation of the territory.