| Subject: UNTAET
allows Indonesian military probe team into East Timor
UNTAET allows Indonesian military probe
team into East Timor
JAKARTA, Dec 26 (AFP) - A team of lawyers
defending a group of Indonesian generals accused of masterminding post
ballot violence in East Timor have received the green light from UN
officials to enter the territory next week, a report said Sunday.
Team coordinator former justice minister
Muladi (eds: one name) said the UN Transitional Administration in East
Timor (UNTAET) "has issued us with an entry permit to enter East
Timor," Kompas daily reported.
"We will use this opportunity, we
will fly directly from Jakarta to Dili on a jet plane and there won't be
any stopovers like the previous team headed by Adnan Buyung Nasution,"
he reportedly said.
He was referring to a fact finding team
headed by lawyer Nasution which was refused entry into East Timor earlier
this month, with UNTAET saying the request for a permission to enter the
territory had been made too suddenly.
"The sooner we depart, the better.
I'm hoping it will be next week but the day has yet to be decided,"
Muladi said.
Nasution has accused the International
Forces in East Timor (Interfet) of committing "an obstruction of
justice" by barring them from Dili, an allegation which Interfet has
denied.
Mulaid said the team was allowed to only
have five men for the visit due to "consideration of security,
accommodation and transportation."
He added the team was currently waiting
for UNTAET's permission to interview several witnesses to "even out
data and information" obtained by the state-backed Commission of
Human Rights Abuses in East Timor (KPP HAM).
A source close to the team told AFP on
Sunday that the lawyers also intended to meet Baucau Bishop Basilio do
Nascimento and National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) President
Xanana Gusmao.
The lawyers are defending several senior
army officers -- including powerful former armed forces chief General
Wiranto -- who have been indirectly accused by KPP HAM of "having the
knowledge and masterminding" the September mayhem.
However Wiranto told the commission on
Friday that "there had been no plan or policy for either a genocide
or crimes against humanity in East Timor" which voted to secede from
Indonesia in August.
Other than Wiranto, the commission has
also called five other generals and several top pro-Indonesia militia
leaders to answer questions over their "knowledge and
involvement" in the violence that followed the pro-independence
ballot in East Timor.
The militias, which the United Nations,
the KPP HAM and other observers have said were backed by elements of the
Indonesian army, devastated the territory and forced hundreds of thousands
to flee.
KPP HAM, a subsidiary commission under
the National Commission on Human Rights, was set up in response to a UN
inquiry into the East Timor violence.
Indonesia has said it was capable of
investigating allegations of atrocities and human rights abuses itself,
and that it will not be bound by the UN findings.
The UN panel is to report to Secretary
General Kofi Annan before December 31 to enable him to decide on the
follow up, including whether an international war crimes tribunal is
needed.
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