Agence France Presse

November 23, 2001 Friday

Canadian officer named head of international police force in East Timor

OTTAWA, Nov 22

The number two of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Chief Superintendent Peter Miller, has been named police commissioner for the UN mission to East Timor for one year, the federal police announced Thursday.

Miller, who left Canada for East Timor on Thursday, will head 1,500 police officers from 40 countries charged with maintaining security in the territory for the United Nations Transitional Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNTAET).

Miller directed a similar UN mission in Western Sahara in 1998 and 1999, and was deputy to the chief of the UN mission in Haiti in 1997.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony administered by the United Nations since 1999, is to become fully independent on May 20, 2002.

At the end of October the UN Security Council voted to keep a reduced UN mission in East Timor after independence, saying a premature withdrawal could have a destabilizing effect on the young state.

The territory was devastated by militias backed by the Indonesian army after residents voted overwhelmingly in August 1999 for independence from Indonesia, which had invaded it in 1975.

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