24A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 9, 1999 NATION/WORLD 11 . ff I 30,000 East Timorese flee ongoing chaos in homeland J t Wx aFR x . . DILI, Indonesia (AP) - Driven by fear, killings and army gunfire, East Timorese jammed onto ships and into trucks yesterday as soldiers patrolled their homeland, trying to keep it from sinking further into chaos. With an estimated 30,000 people having fled the provincial capital in the past few days, the streets of Dili, the capital, were empty save for looters, smoldering fires and some pro- Indonesian militia bands. Indonesian President B.J. Habibie canceled plans to attend the APEC summit in New Zealand, the government announced yesterday. Leaders of the countries belonging to APEC, representing Pacific Rim nations, will be meet- ing in coming days, with the East Timor crisis expected to be discussed widely. But State Secretary Muladi said Habibie had decided not to attend. Muladi, who uses only one name, denied that Habibie's decision was motivated by the escalating crisis in East Timor. A relative calm had reportedly returned to Dili early yesterday, but reports later said resi- dents were still fleeing from across the territory. U.N. officials said staff members were able to leave; their besieged compound and drive around the city to assess damage for the first time since Sunday. "We are not intending any more evacuations. We plan to keep our people there," U.N. spokesperson David Wimhurst said from Darwin, Australia, where many staff members have evacuated. Despite the improvement, the situation remained tense with sporadic gunfire heard throughout the night, though far less than in previous days, Wimhurst said. On Tuesday, officials from the World Bank to the White House to the Vatican urged a halt to the shooting rampages and terror that erupted last week when East Timorese voted to break away from Indonesia. While leaders from East Timor, Australia, New Zealand and other nations pushed harder for an international peacekeeping force to inter- vene, the U.N. Security Council said Tuesday such talk was premature. Council members said first they wanted to hear back from five U.N. ambassadors sent to Indonesia to persuade Habibie to rein in his military - said by wit- nesses to be orchestrating the carnage along with anti-independence militias. The high-level U.N. delegation arrived yes- terday in Jakarta, seeking Indonesian guaran- tees it would restore order in the embattled province and saying the international communi- ty should be more involved there. "We hope that martial law will work, but of course it would be more useful and beneficial if we had the rest of the international community participate in East Timor," said Ambassador Martin Andjaba of Namibia, who is leading the team. The Clinton Administration said the group would assess whether Indonesians are willing and capable of providing security. "Once they've made a judgment on that ... we will, as will many countries, take a look at whether we participate," said White House press secretary Joe Lockhart. The State Department sounded more fore- boding. "Many have been killed. Indonesian military and police forces have allowed and in some cases participated in these abuses," said spokesperson James Rubin, adding U.S.- Indonesian relations depended upon Indonesia quelling the violence and supporting the results of the U.N.-administered referendum. The increasingly powerless Indonesian gov- ernment imposed martial law, which includes the authority to search without warrants, a cur- few to keep people off the streets and "the shooting on sight of people who go against the curfew," said Foreign Minister Ali Alatas. The restrictions went into effect Tuesday. One election observer said she overheard 4. 4 \4 . I AP Photo Indonesian protesters burn an Australian flag at the Australian embassy yesterday. Anti-Australian and United Nations protests continue as protesters blame the current unrest in East Timor on interference by foreign nations. Timor policy i prompts questions The Washington Post WASHINGTON -The grim-faced figure of Jose Ramos-Horta, co-win- ner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, arrived in Washington yesterday with an unwelcome back-to-school mes- sage. The gist was this: Half a world away - in a territory that has fewer people than the city of Boston, in a place that is partly a relic of the colonial era and partly the product of a defunct dicta- torship - the credibility and the moral authority of the United States = and United Nations are at stake. The place is East Timor, a former Portuguese colony seized by Indonesia in 1975, which last week voted overwhelmingly against autono- my, thus for independence, in a refer- endum allowed by Indonesia and con- ducted by the United Nations. Ever since, militias backed by Indonesian soldiers have been killing, burning and looting. This, said Ramos-Horta, is the lat. est litmus test ofAmerica's humanitar- ian impulse to intervene to save inno- cents abroad. "What is the West doing - the West that went to Bosni, that went to Serbia, bombed Serbia back to the stone age in the name of human rights, to prevent ethnic cleansing?" Ramos- Horta asked at the National Press Club yesterday. "The U.N. (and) the international community said, 'We stand by the East Timorese. We will not let them down.' ... And now what is going to be the fate of the East Timorese?" The community of civilized nations was supposed to have shown its mettle just three months ago with its war to stop ethnic repression in the Serbian province of Kosovo. It was, President Clinton said at the time, a war to show that the world would act, when possi- ble, to block crimes against humani4 and bring their perpetrators to justice. "I think there's an important princi- ple here that I hope will be now ip:heid in the future," he said in com- mens that have been labeled the Clin.or. Doctr ne. "If the world com- munit has the power to stop it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic c:ensing." But thee has been no worldwide crackdown on violators of human ights. In the Congo, Sierra Leone, and other places, victims continue to appeal for foreign intervention. And the Clinton administration has been circumspect about the obligation to intervene without Indonesia's consent. "The question of East Timor and Kosovo are not the same," State Department spokesman James Rubin said Tuesday. "It doesn't mean we care less about East Timor tha we care about Kosovo, but it does mean that they are different places with different national interests, dif- ferent histories, different factors at play, and people should be very care- ful before they throw analogies around ."