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Portugal-ETimor-US Lisbon asks Albright to raise East Timor question with Jakarta

LISBON, Nov 17 (AFP) - Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama has asked US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to raise the question of East Timor with the Indonesian authorities when she visits Jakarta this week.

A foreign ministry spokesman said Gama had written to Albright complaining that Indonesia had increased its military presence in East Timor in violation of undertakings given by its foreign minister Ali Alatas.

The spokesman, quoted by the Portuguese news agency Lusa, said Alatas had made the pledge during the last round of UN-mediated talks on East Timor in New York in August.

Gama also drew Albright's attention to recent allegations by a former governor of East Timor that Indonesian troops massacred some 150 East Timorese in 1991, only days after the already-known killings at the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, the territory's capital, on November 12.

Gama said the revelations to a Lisbon weekly, Expresso, by Mario Carrascalao confirmed assertions by Dili's bishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Carlos Ximenes Belo, that the number of victims of the Santa Cruz massacre was much higher than the 30 dead admitted by Jakarta.

The United Nations considers Portugal to be still the administrative power in East Timor, which was occupied by Indonesia in 1975 and annexed the following year.

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