Associated Press
July 13, 2001
UN Official Calls For War Crimes Tribunal For East Timor
DILI, East Timor (AP)--A top U.N. official in East Timor Friday urged
the
international community to set up a war crimes tribunal if Indonesia fails
to
prosecute those responsible for atrocities committed after the territory
voted for independence in 1999.
Peter Galbraith, political affairs minister in the U.N. administration
in
East Timor, said he'd "seen very little evidence" that Indonesia
was serious
in its efforts to bring to trial those responsible for the violence.
"If there's no progress toward bringing to justice the people responsible
for
the crimes ... there should be an international war crimes tribunal,"
Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, told journalists in East
Timor's capital, Dili.
Galbraith said the world had already waited two years for Indonesia to
prosecute those responsible.
His call for international action is the highest yet from a serving U.N.
official. Until now, U.N. workers in East Timor, and at the world body's
headquarters in New York, have said Indonesia should be allowed to prosecute
the perpetrators of the violence itself, before an international court
is
considered.
Hundreds of people were killed, tens of thousands forced to flee their
homes,
and much of the territory's infrastructure destroyed when Indonesia's
army
and its militia proxies went on the rampage after East Timor voted in
1999
for independence in a U.N.-sponsored referendum.
The violence only came to a halt when an international peacekeeping force
arrived in September that year. The territory is being governed by the
U.N.
during its transition to full independence, expected early next year.
Investigators in Jakarta have named several Indonesian military commanders
and militia leaders as suspects in the 1999 rampage. But no trials have
started yet and Indonesian authorities have refused to extradite suspects
to
East Timor for trial.
Galbraith, who was involved in setting up a war crimes tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia, officially steps down from his U.N. post Monday after
18
months in East Timor.