Troops set to enter E. Timor

As thousands of troops sailed toward Dili, Australian Maj. Gen. Peter Cosgrove toured streets devastated by rampaging militias, passing charred houses and buildings reduced to smoking ashes.

"This is not a time for idle threats or words," he said after meeting the Indonesian military commander of the territory. "This is a time for the force to arrive, and to get about its tasks of helping to create a secure environment. We will be here to ensure that all East Timorese are able to go about their business free of threat."

The announcement two weeks ago that 78.5 percent of East Timor's voters approved a break with Indonesia led to a murderous rampage by pro-Indonesia militias that drove more than 300,000 people from their homes, and cost at least several hundred live

AP PHOTO As part of the international peacekeeping force headed for East Timor, French troop and medical personnel exit the airport in Darwin, Australia yesterday.

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The foreign intervention is a major humiliation for Indonesia, whose army had fought for nearly 25 years to put down separatist rebels. It also bodes ill for the nation's future, as separatists elsewhere in the ethnically diverse archipelago take heart from the success of the East Timorese.

President B.J. Habibie's decision to invite the peacekeepers a week ago has led to a nationalist backlash in Indonesia, and has sent angry protesters into the streets.

Humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of refugees, some of them facing starvation, was to be the first priority of the U.N.-approved peace mission.

The first combat troops in the 7,500-member force were due to arrive at 6:30 a.m. local time today aboard a C-130 Hercules transport plane, beginning a mission that Australian Prime Minister John Howard said was fraught with menace.

By this afternoon, 2,500 Australian soldiers, helicopters and armored personnel carriers would be on the ground in Dili, said Maj. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri, commander of the Indonesian forces in East Timor.

Nine warships, from Australia, Britain and New Zealand, were sailing toward East Timor. About 250 Gurkhas, Nepalese fighters who serve in the British army and carry their trademark 13-inch kukri knives, also were to be among the first international troops.

Cosgrove said the force would have 3,200 troops in East Timor within a week. The mission will probably last several months before making way for a follow-up U.N. peacekeeping force, he said.

Cosgrove flew from Darwin, the staging port in northern Australia where troops from a score of countries were assembling. He was greeted on the tarmac at Dili airport by Syahnakri, the Indonesian commander, whom he met for 90 minutes to coordinate the deployment. Cosgrove was guarded by seven Australian soldiers in full battle gear.

Indonesian soldiers were posted every 200 yards along Cosgrove's route as he went on a 20-minute tour. Visible effort had been made to clear away rubble and other evidence of the rioting, looting and killing.

While Cosgrove toured the city, the few militiamen who have not left brandished machetes as families hurried aboard crowded Indonesian navy vessels and rusty cargo ships.

Thousands of homeless people huddled under tarpaulins along a narrow strip of beach. Some looked out to sea for the foreign warships on their way from northern Australia.

"We are staying here ... because we heard that the U.N. troops will come," said Frederico de Jesus, 18, who was on the beach. "They will bring peace. We will be safer then."

Hundreds of supporters of Indonesian rule, many of them the wives and children of soldiers, waited in line to catch chartered flights shuttling out to neighboring West Timor, where tens of thousands have already fled. Many wore Indonesia's red and white colors.

"Foreign soldiers should stay out of Timor. They have no right to occupy my homeland," said Filomena da Silva, a Timorese-born Indonesian government worker.

Less than an hour after Cosgrove returned to Darwin, gunfire erupted around the Dili airport, and a column of black smoke rose in the distance from a burning building. Militia leaders have threatened to attack the peacekeepers.

Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, the recently freed East Timorese rebel leader, flew to Darwin to meet with other resistance figures. Spokesperson Joao Carrascalao said yesterday that Gusmao is making plans for a transitional government and sending a delegation to the World Bank later this month.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, plans to start a major relief operation on Wednesday in East Timor, spokesperson Sri Wahyu Endah said yesterday. The plan includes a mobile hospital to back up the only civilian hospital in Dili.

"There are still no doctors" in the Dili hospital, she said. "The medical equipment is all gone."

09-20-99