Received from Joyo Indonesia News

Bush Names Ambassador to East Timor

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 (AP) _ President Bush on Tuesday named a former congressional lawyer with a background in human rights as ambassador to East Timor, which became an independent nation in May and is confronting human rights issues.

Grover Joseph Rees has served as chief lawyer to the House International Relations Committee since February 2001. From 1995 to 2001, he was the top attorney for a House panel on human rights.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has criticized last month's acquittal of six Indonesian officers charged with allowing a 1999 massacre in Suai, East Timor and other killings after the half-island territory voted to break from Indonesia in a U.N.-sponsored referendum.

The verdicts by Indonesian courts outraged foreign governments and human rights groups, which have long feared those responsible for the killings in East Timor would go unpunished.

From 1986 to 1991, Rees was associate justice and then chief justice of the High Court of American Samoa.

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