---------------------------------------------------------- FREE for JOIN Indonesia Daily News Online via EMAIL: go to: http://www.indo-news.com/subscribe.html - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - FREE - Please Visit Our Sponsor http://www.indo-news.com/cgi-bin/ads1 ---------------------------------------------------------- Australian Broadcasting Corporation PM News Wednesday, August 18, 1999 6:24 Transcript Second attack on UN compound in East Timor MARK COLVIN: Back to our own region now and there's been another attack on a UN compound in the Western part of East Timor. It's happened at Maliana (phonetic), the scene of an earlier siege in which rock-throwing autonomy supporters surrounded the UN forces. Our correspondent, Mark Bowling, is in Maliana. Satellite communication has been intermittent, but I spoke to him earlier this afternoon. MARK BOWLING: Well, I'm inside the United Nations compound and at the moment they are just moving people - about 70 foreign nationals, observers who are here overseeing the referendum process - moving those people in a convoy of cars out of the UN compound to a safer area of the town. Outside the United Nations compound there are militiamen, dozens of them. There were hundreds of them before, er, making threats, saying they want the United Nations people out of their towns. They say they're not needed, they're not wanted here. MARK COLVIN: This harks back to a few weeks ago when the camp at Maliana was actually fully besieged. MARK BOWLING: That's right. They were throwing rocks at the personnel inside the compound and ABC reporters, of course, had to make a run for it from outside the compound back inside to the compound. This morning we saw the same thing here. We saw rock throwing militias march down the street towards the offices of the CNRT, the peak body for the pro-independence people. They stoned that. They smashed the windows. They broke furniture and took away papers and they did the same thing to an office of a student group further up the road. MARK COLVIN: What are the UNIMET, the United Nations Transitional Mission there saying about what they're doing? Are they calling this a full evacuation? MARK BOWLING: They're not calling it an evacuation. They say they are simply moving some of the personnel out of the compound because of the tense situation. They have been taken back to their quarters on the edge of town. They're not evacuating Maliana as such, but clearly the tensions are very high here. People have been barking orders, calling on people to hurry up and get inside the compound firstly, and then to organise them very rapidly to get into the vehicle so they can ... so they can move them out quickly as well. MARK COLVIN: But if they're unsafe in the compound, will they be safe in their quarters on the other side of town? MARK BOWLING: Well, what they're afraid of here - and remember it's a compound with high walls and barbed wire fences - is people climbing over the top. Now, the area where the people are housed is less ... much less secure than that, although it is away from the centre of town where most of the activity has been this morning, the stoning, the clashes between various factions. So, at least they'll be away from the centre of the action but there's nothing to say that the militias won't go straight there to the UN housing complex. MARK COLVIN: What are you going to do yourself, Mark? Are you staying there in the compound? Is anyone staying in the compound? MARK BOWLING: We're staying here in the compound. Later today the UN Task Force and Indonesian senior military officers are coming here to have a look at the situation in Maliana. They've identified it as one of the most dangerous in East Timor, heading towards this referendum, and they want to do something about it. MARK COLVIN: Can you speculate at all on whether this means that the local pro-autonomy people around Maliana are actually out of Jakarta's control, or does it mean possibly that Jakarta is, in that area, actually defying the UN? MARK BOWLING: Well, this is one of the problems and this is why the task force and the United Nations' Ian Martin were coming today to address that problem. They realise that there is a very close association between the Indonesian police and the militia groups ... rather, the Indonesian military and the militia groups and they want to see that stopped. They will be talking to the Papati, the chief man, the Mayor of the town, about that problem and saying it's not really on in a lead up to a referendum. Clearly the Bupati, the Chief here, does have control over the militias and he does have control of the local military as well and that's something that the UN knows they must put an end to if they're going to see anything resembling a fair vote. MARK COLVIN: Mark Bowling. Ian Martin of the UN has now arrived at Maliana. He's told Mark Bowling that he's extremely concerned about what's happened there. Mark is now on the move to a safer spot but he will be updating that story on ABC News later this evening, and AM tomorrow morning. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 18 Aug 1999 jam 20:58:44 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
