War Crimes Charges Loom in East Timor

It's not surprising Indonesia's generals are so opposed to having Australians lead the East Timor peacekeeping force: Australian lawyers on Tuesday began setting up evidence-gathering procedures for an eventual U.N. war crimes tribunal for the territory. U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson laid the groundwork for such a tribunal Monday, alleging that the East Timor violence had been not simply random thuggery by ragtag militiamen but a systematic campaign of depopulation, and accusing the Indonesian military of intimate involvement in the brutal scheme. But despite the open hostility in Indonesia, Australian forces look set to lead the peacekeeping mission taking shape at the U.N. The Security Council worked late into the night crafting an enabling resolution, and Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas indicated that despite its preference for avoiding Australians (whom it accuses of being pro-independence), Indonesia won't set preconditions for the peacekeeping force, which is expected to be authorized within days.

But the nationalist backlash against foreign intervention has been growing inside Indonesia, and may yet spark another season of domestic political turmoil as protesters bay for the head of President B. J. Habibie, who caved in to international pressure to invite a peacekeeping force. In East Timor, the U.N. evacuated the remaining 1,300 refugees from its besieged compound in Dili Tuesday, and President Clinton got some unexpected help selling East Timor intervention to congressional skeptics when reports emerged that the Indonesian military has detained American journalist Allan Nairn, one of the few Western correspondents who had remained in East Timor. A correspondent for the Nation magazine and a persistent critic of both the Indonesian presence in East Timor and Washington's response, Nairn reportedly was arrested Tuesday and has been interrogated by Indonesian police. The media may not be America's favorites, but that doesn't mean the nation will accept their being harassed by foreign policemen.