* NATO Insubordination In Kosovo Is Recalled
* 'Disarmed' KLA to have military structure
* Cohen: Kosovo War Showed Limits
**
* U.N. Gives Indonesia a Troop Reprieve
* Cohen Warns on U.S. Intervention
* U.S. suspends relations with Indonesia (3)
* Indonesia Army Chief Key to Crisis
* U.N. evacuates embattled compound
* Fate of East Timor Lies in Hands of the Military
* Clinton Demands End of Violence in East Timor

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By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 10, 1999; Page A33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/10/074l-091099-idx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/091099nato-clark.html

In the immediate aftermath of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, Western officials were caught off guard when a small contingent of Russian troops dashed into Kosovo and occupied the Pristina airfield.

NATO authorities averted a military confrontation with Moscow and eventually negotiated a way of incorporating Russian forces into the NATO-led peacekeeping operation. But the June 12 incident provoked a sharp clash within NATO itself, with the British three-star officer who heads the Kosovo force resisting orders--issued by the American four-star general who commands NATO--to block the Russians.

Details of the conflict emerged yesterday at a Senate hearing on the nomination of Gen. Henry H. Shelton for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Shelton confirmed the episode publicly for the first time.

He said the British officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, had opposed instructions from Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's top military officer, to move military vehicles onto the Pristina airfield ahead of the Russians' arrival. Clark wanted to prevent the 200 initial Russian troops, who were rolling into Pristina by land, from flying in reinforcements.

But Jackson was worried that any precipitous NATO action could risk a major blowup with the Russians and upset the whole peacekeeping plan, which was just getting underway with the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo.

"General Jackson said: 'No, I'm not going to do that. It's not worth starting World War III.' I believe that was the quote that was used," Shelton recalled.

Jackson appealed to senior British military and political authorities in London, who persuaded Clinton administration officials in Washington to drop support for Clark's plan. Shelton, who had favored occupying the airfield, said he was personally lobbied in a 4 a.m. phone call by Gen. Sir Charles Guthrie, his British counterpart.

Asked to recount the story by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Shelton joined the senator in expressing concern that allowing subordinate NATO commanders to disregard the instructions of superiors could undermine alliance operations.

Warner suggested that such behavior may be all too prevalent in NATO. He noted that a NATO term even exists for it--invoking a "red card"--a phrase not written in any alliance law or regulation, but representing "some sort of a practice or understanding that has grown up through the years in NATO," Warner said.

"And now we hear of a subordinate commander failing to carry out the specific orders of the supreme allied commander, which to date and presumably for the future is an American officer," Warner said. "I find that troubling. Do you find that troubling?"

"Yes, sir, I do," Shelton replied. "As, of course, in any military operation, one of the things that we stress is discipline.

"The troubling piece," the general went on, "is that unity of command and moving in a cohesive manner--and with a chain of command that is effective--is at the heart of this issue. And certainly we can't have second-guessing at every level of command."

Warner said he intends to investigate NATO's command procedures during hearings on the future of the alliance scheduled for later this year.

---

9/09/99- Updated 04:14 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/index/kosovo/koso1101.htm

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Former ethnic Albanian rebels will wear uniforms and serve under ''military structures'' in a new organization to replace the Kosovo Liberation Army, a NATO official said Thursday.

Russia, however, called the plan for a restructured KLA ''unacceptable.'' The government plans to make its objections clear when the head of the U.N. mission, Bernard Kouchner, and U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen visit Moscow next week, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

With the Sept. 19 deadline for the demilitarization of the KLA approaching, some senior figures in the group are said to be reluctant to accept any plan that spells the end of their army, which rose up against the Serbs in late 1997.

Russia and some Western European governments, however, are concerned about letting the KLA play a major security role - especially in view of the continuing attacks by ethnic Albanians against Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities.

Reinforcing those concerns, NATO announced Thursday that eight KLA members were arrested late Wednesday in the western city of Djakovica. The rebels had a machine gun, cluster bombs, and other weapons that were supposed to have been turned in to NATO authorities under a phased disarmament plan signed in June.

In the southwestern town of Suva Reka, NATO said a Gypsy, or Roma, woman died Thursday after being shot by men in KLA uniforms. Ethnic Albanians accuse Gypsies of siding with the Serbs.

Nevertheless, the NATO command, with the support of the United States, has been negotiating details of the new ''Kosovo Corps.''

NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Robin Clifford said that although the corps would be a civil organization, it ''will have military structures, which means they will be uniformed public services.'' He said the corps' duties have yet to be discussed.

In Moscow, however, Russia was pushing for the complete disarming and disbanding of the former rebel army, ITAR-Tass said.

A leading Serbian opposition group, the Serbian Democratic Party, also condemned the plan, saying it would violate the Kosovo peace agreement.

Also Thursday, a spokesman for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said Yugoslavia will not intervene in Kosovo while the U.N. peace mandate is in effect.

Ivica Dacic's pledge backed away from recent statements by other Milosevic associates, who had threatened to send troops to Kosovo to stop anti-Serb violence. Dacic denied that would happen under the current arrangement, but hinted that it was a possibility once peacekeepers were gone.

''I think that they will leave sooner and later and we can hardly wait for the moment,'' Dacic said. ''Our struggle for Kosovo continues and if anybody thinks we have given up on it, is terribly wrong.''

Most of Kosovo's more than 200,000 Serbs have fled the province since NATO and Russian peacekeepers entered on June 12. Those who remain complain that the 40,000 NATO-led troops are protecting only the ethnic Albanians.

---

Filed at 11:00 p.m. EDT, September 09, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Cohen-Kosovo.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Kosovo conflict served as a reminder that the United States cannot commit troops in every crisis that ``catches our eye and emotion,'' Defense Secretary William Cohen said Thursday.

Speaking to a conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Coronado, Calif., Cohen said the United States and its NATO allies were right to intervene in Kosovo to end Serb repression. But the experience also underscored that intervention is not the answer in every crisis, he said.

``Among the enduring lessons of this and every conflict is that we must resist the temptation to use our forces in every dispute that catches our eye and emotion,'' Cohen said in remarks prepared for delivery. An advance copy of his speech was made available to reporters at the Pentagon.

Cohen made no mention in his prepared remarks of the crisis unfolding in East Timor. His comments on limiting U.S. military commitments seemed to suggest, however, a reluctance to consider sending troops to that area.

Cohen said the 78-day NATO air war against Yugoslavia showed the changing nature of warfare and political conflict.

He said it highlighted a ``superpower paradox'': U.S. supremacy in conventional military power is prompting adversaries to develop unconventional methods of warfare. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, for example, used ``rape, pillage and slaughter'' as a military tactic, Cohen said. By expelling hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and killing many others, Milosevic created a humanitarian crisis as a combat strategy, he said.

-----------

By THE NEW YORK TIMES, September 10, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/timor-council.html

UNITED NATIONS -- Indonesia got at least another day's reprieve on Thursday as the Secretary General and the Security Council relaxed an informal deadline for action on troops after receiving reports that the situation in East Timor had begun to improve slightly.

The Security Council was told that Indonesian authorities would let the United Nations send a relief team to West Timor, an extremely poor province now sheltering tens of thousands driven from East Timor without food or protection. The Red Cross will also be allowed back into East Timor, which has been ravaged by violence for a week.

But Council members, bound by their governments' unwillingness to go beyond the wishes of Indonesia, once again pressed its leaders to restore order.

Rights organizations and aid agencies increasingly fear that if and when order returns to East Timor, the extent of destruction caused by the militias will surpass predictions. Another concern is that Indonesian troops -- not all willing to obey Indonesia's army chief, Gen. Wiranto -- may resume attacks on foreigners assessing the damage as well on as Timorese who try to return.

---

Filed at 2:32 a.m. EDT, September 10, 1999, The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Cohen.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States should not commit troops in every international crisis that ``catches our eye and emotion,'' Defense Secretary William Cohen said in remarks that suggested an inclination not to intervene militarily in East Timor.

In a speech prepared for delivery Thursday night to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Coronado, Calif., Cohen made no mention of the crisis in East Timor, where violence triggered by an independence vote has forced more than 200,000 people to flee their homeland.

Focusing on lessons learned from the Kosovo conflict, Cohen said the United States and its NATO allies were right to intervene in Kosovo to end Serb repression, but the experience underscored that intervention is not the answer in every crisis.

``Among the enduring lessons of this and every conflict is that we must resist the temptation to use our forces in every dispute that catches our eye and emotion,'' Cohen said in his prepared remarks. An advance copy of his speech was made available to reporters at the Pentagon.

Cohen said the 78-day NATO air war against Yugoslavia showed the changing nature of warfare and political conflict, saying it highlighted a ``superpower paradox'': U.S. supremacy in conventional military power is prompting adversaries to develop unconventional methods of warfare.

For example, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic used ``rape, pillage and slaughter'' as a military tactic, Cohen said. By expelling hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and killing many others, Milosevic created a humanitarian crisis as a combat strategy, he said.

Cohen said Americans must answer several basic questions before deciding whether it is right to intervene militarily in an international crisis like Kosovo. Among those questions are whether the vital interests of the United States or its allies are directly threatened and whether ``the wheel of conflict, if allowed to spin on its violent axis'' will draw other nations into its vortex at ever greater cost.

---

9/10/99- Updated 01:11 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu04.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton suspended relations with Indonesia's military Thursday and insisted its government allow international peacekeepers in to quell violence in chaotic East Timor.

''If Indonesia does not end the violence, it must invite - it must invite - the international community to assist in restoring security,'' Clinton said. ''It must move forward in the transition to independence.''

Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, the president said he also could suspend economic assistance to Indonesia if it continues to resist East Timor's ''clear, unambiguous'' desire for independence.

And he announced that international financial institutions had frozen assistance to Indonesia.

''Right now, the financial institutions are not moving forward with substantial new lending to Indonesia,'' he said. ''My own willingness to support future assistance will depend very strongly on the way Indonesia handles this situation.''

On Capitol Hill, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said International Monetary Fund lending was effectively ended after U.S. officials held talks with IMF officials.

''It would be a pity if the Indonesian recovery were crashed by this,'' Clinton said. ''But one way or the other it will be crashed by this if they don't fix it. ... Nobody is going to want to continue to invest there if they're allowing this sort of travesty to go on.''

Clinton said the United States is consulting with Australia and the U.S. Congress on what steps might be taken on keeping peace in East Timor.

The president spoke a few hours before he was to depart for New Zealand, where he was attending a summit with Asian leaders where Indonesia's actions in East Timor is destined to be a topic of discussion.

The decision to suspend military relations was delivered personally to Gen. Wiranto, the chief of Indonesia's armed forces, by Navy Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. The rupture in military relations followed days of pleading by the Clinton administration for Indonesia to quell the violence in East Timor.

''We just don't think that it's appropriate, given the circumstances, that that relationship continue at this point,'' Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told a news conference.

Suspending U.S. relations with the Indonesian military means an indefinite end to planning for any future joint military exercises and no further exchanges of liaison officers, Quigley said. He said it was not immediately clear whether the decision would interrupt U.S. arms sales to Indonesia or result in the expulsion of Indonesian military officers attending military academies in the United States.

On Capitol Hill, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he spoke to Wiranto by telephone on Monday and ''laid out for him in no uncertain terms what I thought we needed to see from Indonesia, and specifically from him.'' He said Indonesia has sufficient forces in East Timor to restore order, although Wiranto indicated he intends to send more troops.

''There's a lot of risk in terms of future relations with Indonesia,'' Shelton told the Senate Armed Services Committee, although he did not mention that the Pentagon had suspended military relations.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the committee, said he viewed the violence in East Timor as ''virtual genocide,'' although he had not decided whether it justified U.S. military intervention.

The violence in predominantly Catholic East Timor broke out after voters overwhelmingly chose independence from mostly Muslim Indonesia.

Shelton said the crisis in East Timor presents no threat to U.S. national interests that would justify placing American troops on the ground there. He said the Clinton administration had not yet ruled out taking an active role in helping resolve the crisis, but he said he saw no need to commit U.S. forces. He cited the possibility of contributing U.S. military communications, logistics or transport aircraft.

''If you look at East Timor by itself, I cannot see any national interest there that would be overwhelming, that would call for us to deploy or place U.S. forces on the ground in that area,'' Shelton said.

The American military does not have an extensive relationship with the Indonesian military, although it has held some joint exercises focusing on humanitarian aid operations and civil defense, Quigley said.

''That has now been suspended in light of the current situation,'' the spokesman said. He did not explicitly criticize the performance of the Indonesian military in the East Timor crisis, but he reiterated the Clinton administration's plea for the Indonesians to act quickly to restore order and stability.

Shelton said that the Pentagon has offered to provide the Australian military with ''planning staff'' from the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, but that Australia had not yet requested any help.

---

By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES, 9/10/99
http://www.washtimes.com/news/news2.html#link

The United States Thursday suspended all ties with Indonesia's military and issued a presidential ultimatum demanding that Jakarta allow international peacekeepers to restore order in East Timor if it cannot do so itself.

The suspension of military ties came days after Indonesia's military chief had delivered assurances he would restore order, raising questions as to who really controls the army.

"If Indonesia does not end the violence, it must invite -- it must invite -- the international community to assist in restoring security," President Clinton told reporters at the White House Thursday.

The United States has ruled out sending American troops to the territory but has not decided how it would contribute to an international peacekeeping effort.

Mr. Clinton warned that the crisis threatens to cut international investment in Indonesia and that the crisis was bound to damage the nation of 210 million.

"It would be a pity if the Indonesian recovery were crashed by this," Mr. Clinton said. "But one way or the other it will be crashed by this if they don't fix it. . . . Nobody is going to want to continue to invest there if they're allowing this sort of travesty to go on."

In East Timor, militiamen backed by troops continued to kill priests, nuns and civilians and to drive thousands from their homes and into exile camps in Indonesian-controlled West Timor, said the Vatican and other sources.

Analysts said that the violence is being orchestrated by red-beret special forces troops loyal to former President Suharto's son-in-law, Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who was demoted by Defense Minister Wiranto as Mr. Suharto was ousted form power last year.

Nobel Peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta said the forces set up by Gen. Prabowo were showing their independence from Gen. Wiranto's control.

Gen. Wiranto has sent additional troops to East Timor who are loyal to him, but it was not clear Thursday whether they had been ordered to -- or were able and willing to --end the widespread killing and burning.

Pro-Indonesian militias backed by the army unleashed their violence after 78.5 percent of East Timorese voted Aug. 30 for independence.

"This [violence] is a policy of the Indonesian army, of the two branches, the special forces and the military intelligence," Mr. Ramos-Horta said.

"I believe even the defense minister of Indonesia has no control over these elements of the armed forces on the ground in East Timor," Mr. Ramos-Horta told the Public Broadcast Service Wednesday.

While the Pentagon yesterday said it was cutting ties to the 400,000-member Indonesian military, most ties already had been severed by the Bush administration in 1992 in the wake of a massacre in the East Timor capital, Dili.

"We are officially suspending our military-to-military relationship," Navy Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. "This is the right thing to do given the situation. That is not a military that we feel we can sustain a military-to-military relationship with at this point."

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, yesterday told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had spoken to Gen. Wiranto and urged him to rein in the violence.

"We need to see positive movement in a very rapid manner in that regard, there is a lot at risk here in terms of future relations with Indonesia . . . the message has been delivered," Gen. Shelton said.

The continuing rampage by troops and militias has shown that President B.J. Habibie is weak and does not really control the army, said Robert Manning, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.

This is likely to discourage foreign investment, which is seen as vital if the economy is to move back from the devastating effects of the Asian economic collapse in 1997, Mr. Manning said.

However, he and other analysts said it was unlikely a stalling of the Indonesian economy would drag down the region and spread around the world, as happened in 1997 and 1998.

Gen. Shelton said that he did not see a national security risk to the United States in Indonesia's problems that would justify sending in U.S. troops.

Thomas Pickering, undersecretary of state, told a congressional panel Thursday that "Australia is ready to put forces in . . . but this can't be done without invitation. For a U.N. mandate, we need Jakarta's permission."

Gen. Shelton and others noted that the United States has significant economic and political interests in Indonesia.

Said Marvin Ott, professor of national security at the National War College, "Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation and the largest nation in Southeast Asia, which will be the principal arena of U.S.-China competition in the future."

He noted that nearly half the world's trade passes through three Indonesian-controlled straits --Malacca, Lombok and Sunda -- already beset by piracy.

East Timor had been a "festering but minor sore" for the past 25 years but "it has now become very serious because it shows that civilians do not have control of the military and the military does not have control over its own folks in Timor," said Mr. Ott.

"This is very troubling; the Indonesian army is the only institution capable of holding the country together." He cited other separatist movements in Aceh on Sumatra and in Irian Jaya, the western part of the island of New Guinea.

Said Ed Masters, former ambassador to Indonesia and president of the U.S.-Indonesia Society, "No one knows how far up the chain of command this [Timor violence] goes."

"It's a very dicey situation and a coup is possible. It's not just Timor but the economic crisis and the political transition."

The People's Consultative Assembly, the nation's highest legislative body, is to vote in November for a new president. Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno, led June elections with 35 percent of the vote. But the ruling Golkar party, with 22 percent of the vote, could still form a coalition and block her from power.

Fear of completely destabilizing Indonesia has virtually eliminated talk of economic sanctions through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other lenders.

Former Bush administration Asia expert Doug Paal said it is difficult to apply pressure on Indonesia because "the government is so weakened by the [pro-independence] results of the elections and the Suharto heritage and military divisions.

"General Wiranto is still trying to get complete control of the military. Asserting himself on East Timor is probably low on his scale of priorities," Mr. Paal said.

---

Filed at 2:56 a.m. EDT September 10, 1999, By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-East-Timor.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Indonesia has been clear in refusing outside help to ``stop this madness'' in East Timor -- a signal, perhaps, that some in the government support a violent takeover there, President Clinton said.

``They have been very clear. They do not want to ask for international assistance,'' Clinton said Thursday as he prepared to leave Washington for a week of economic and political summitry in New Zealand -- not far from Indonesia.

Militia gangs opposed to independence in East Timor ransacked the capital, Dili, this week and have forced thousands to flee their homes. The violence followed a vote Monday in which East Timorese chose to split from Indonesia, which annexed the former Portuguese colony nearly 25 years ago.

Clinton suspended relations with Indonesia's military Thursday and threatened to suspend economic assistance to Indonesia if it continues to resist East Timor's ``clear, unambiguous'' desire for independence.

``If Indonesia does not end the violence, it must invite -- it must invite -- the international community to assist in restoring security,'' Clinton said. ``It must move forward in the transition to independence.''

International response to Indonesia will be a major topic as Clinton gathers with regional leaders this weekend. Nearby Australia has already volunteered to send military help.

The United States treaded softly until Thursday -- wary of dealing too harshly with an emerging democracy and of upsetting Indonesia's fragile economic progress.

But Clinton was blunt in laying out what he sees as three explanations for Indonesian reluctance.

``Interpretation number one is they believe they can stop this madness in East Timor and they want to do it and they don't want to have to admit that they have to have help to do it,'' Clinton said.

Another possibility is that chaos in the Indonesian government has left a power vacuum.

Possibility No. 3, Clinton said, ``is that at least some elements in the country support what is happening in East Timor,'' and are willing to let the gangsters run wild.

``In other words, they didn't like the results of the referendum and they're trying to undo it by running people out of the country or into the grave.''

Even before the vote, pro-independence groups charged that the Indonesian military was in cahoots with the militias -- in effect allowing them to do the government's dirty work of stifling the drive for independence.

International aid groups, reporters and others in East Timor this week said the military turned a blind eye to the escalating violence.

Suspending U.S. relations with the Indonesian military means an indefinite end to planning for any future joint military exercises and no further exchanges of liaison officers, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said. He said it was not immediately clear whether the decision would interrupt U.S. arms sales to Indonesia or result in the expulsion of Indonesian military officers attending military academies in the United States.

Clinton said international financial institutions have frozen assistance to Indonesia.

``Right now, the financial institutions are not moving forward with substantial new lending to Indonesia,'' he said. ``My own willingness to support future assistance will depend very strongly on the way Indonesia handles this situation.''

On Capitol Hill, Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering said International Monetary Fund lending was effectively ended after U.S. officials held talks with IMF officials.

``It would be a pity if the Indonesian recovery were crashed by this,'' Clinton said. ``But one way or the other, it will be crashed by this if they don't fix it. ... Nobody is going to want to continue to invest there if they're allowing this sort of travesty to go on.''

---

Filed at 8:49 a.m. EDT September 10, 1999, By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Indonesia-Military-Chief.html

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Last year he pulled the rug from under Indonesia's longtime dictator Suharto. Now he will decide whether President B.J. Habibie stays in office or is sent packing.

Military commander and Defense Minister Gen. Wiranto's star has risen quickly since Suharto stepped down in May 1998.

As the East Timor crisis increasingly undermines the civilian leadership, Wiranto has emerged as the country's principal power-broker despite allegations that his troops are behind a bloody rampage by anti-independence militias.

Wiranto said today that he would travel with a high-level U.N. delegation to the territory Saturday to prove that his troops are behaving properly.

In Washington, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, told a Senate panel Thursday he had telephoned Wiranto twice in recent days.

``I ... laid out to him in no uncertain terms what I felt that we needed to see from Indonesia and specifically from him and the army,'' Shelton told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Shelton's testimony came as President Clinton suspended relations with Indonesia's military because of its role in the violence in East Timor.

Wiranto's ascendancy was made possible by the central role the armed forces have played in Indonesian politics since independence from Dutch rule in 1945.

First established as an anti-allied force by the Japanese occupiers in World War II -- some analysts attribute its disdain for civilians and its extreme brutality to Japanese wartime training -- the army's principal obsession has been maintaining national unity.

The military was the darling of successive U.S. administrations during the Cold War because of its staunch anti-communism. Its slaughter of up to 500,000 leftist sympathizers in the late 1960s -- at the height of the Vietnam War -- sealed the friendship between the two armies.

U.S. advisers have provided extensive counterinsurgency training to the military, which over the years has gradually been transformed into a domestic security force.

In this role, the military has a constitutional right not only to defend the country's territorial integrity, but also to oversee the affairs of the civilian state.

Loss of army support helped ease Suharto -- a five-star general -- out last year, and many Indonesians hoped the army would start taking a back seat in politics.

But the military still retains a significant presence in the 500-seat national parliament, where Wiranto and other generals will nominate 38 deputies. Wiranto, like many Indonesians, uses only one name.

Over the past year, Wiranto refrained from meddling in the campaign for Indonesia's first free parliamentary elections June 7. The party of Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia's founding president, emerged as the winner and she is the likely next head of state.

Tall, trim and fine featured, the 52-year-old general has a youthful, commanding presence.

He came to national prominence when Suharto promoted him to the top military post in February 1988. He had served as Suharto's adjutant from 1989-93, and a photo from the period showed Suharto signing a government document on Wiranto's bent back.

He graduated at the top of his class from the military academy in 1968 and served two tours in East Timor, where his troops are now assisting anti-independence militias in an orgy of violence after voters there opted for independence.

Alone among the top brass, Wiranto never attended military schools abroad.

Since the East Timor upheaval began, he has become increasingly assertive, sparking rumors that a military coup against Habibie is in the offing.

He has strongly denied the allegations. But top generals are known to be furious with Habibie for allowing the East Timor referendum.

They fear that East Timor's secession would encourage other disaffected provinces to emulate it. This would endanger the unity of an inherently unstable nation that the Dutch forged from dozens of independent principalities and which has been described as ``an accident of colonial history.''

Indonesia's strategic position and its economic potential as the world's fourth most-populous nation have made foreign governments wary of acting too forcefully to stop the carnage in East Timor because of the real possibility that such action would undermine its stability.

``The dilemma is that Indonesia matters and East Timor doesn't matter,'' a Western diplomat commented.

Foreign officials and diplomats say Wiranto has effectively stripped Habibie of much of his power and assumed de facto control of the government. They predicted he would decide at some point whether to stage a full military coup or a constitutional coup.

But they noted that an overt movement by the army to oust Habibie was against its long-term interests to effect a peaceful transition in November.

Megawati already has signaled that she will uphold the current role of the military in Indonesian politics, thereby fulfilling Wiranto's main political goal.

---

September 10, 1999
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu01.htm

DILI, Indonesia (AP) - U.N. workers evacuated their embattled compound in East Timor Friday, leaving a skeleton crew to continue working to bring the territory to full nationhood. Anti-independence militiaman fired on the convoy as it left Dili.

There was no immediate word of any injuries among the U.N. staffers, who had been trapped in the complex by the rampaging militias for several days. Some evacuaees arrived in Darwin, Australia, later Friday.

On Thursday, the Roman Catholic Church accused pro-Indonesian militiamen of targeting nuns and priests in predominantly Catholic East Timor, where voters have overwhelmingly chosen independence from mostly Muslim Indonesia.

''The world is talking and we're dying,'' nun Esmeralda de Araujo was quoted as saying by the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. ''It's hell here and I'd like to cry out to everybody to save us. But no one seems to want to hear.''

Among those fleeing Friday was U.N. mission head Ian Martin, wearing a light blue flak jacket and riding on the back of one of the trucks heading for the airport. Some gunfire was heard in the distance.

Keeping the U.N. compound functioning is considered key to the world body's plans to give East Timor nation status after its people voted overwhelmingly on Aug. 30 for independence from Indonesia, which invaded in 1975. The vote triggered a backlash of looting, burning and killing by anti-independence militias. The Indonesian army had pledged to ensure security.

More than 200,000 East Timorese have been forced to leave their homeland, U.N. officials said. More than 50,000 were shipped to militia-run camps in West Timor, where refugees told of massacres and arson attacks by anti-independence militias either backed or led by Indonesian army units.

International outrage grew Thursday, with the Pentagon suspending official relations with the Indonesian military, and foreign ministers at an Asia-Pacific summit demanding that Indonesian leaders stop the rampaging militias. While some countries advocated an international peacekeeping force, key nations shied away from committing troops absent an invitation from the Indonesian government. NATO said it wouldn't take part in such a force.

In Washington, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the crisis presents no threat to U.S. national interests that would justify sending American troops. Shortly after, President Clinton suspended relations with Indonesia's military and insisted its government allow in international peacekeepers.

Australia said Friday it will consider breaking economic ties with Indonesia if Jakarta fails to control the crisis in East Timor. The two nations trade $3.9 billion worth of goods each year.

The nations also have close military links, but Prime Minister John Howard said he had not yet decided whether to suspend Australia's military ties with Indonesia.

The militias have reportedly killed about 100 people, including three priests, in a grenade attack on a church in Suai, the Vatican's missionary news agency Fides reported Thursday. Fifteen priests and some nuns have been reported killed in Dili and Baucau. Caritas Australia said its East Timor office head, the Rev. Francisco Barreto, and ''most'' of his staff had been killed.

''The militiamen have launched a targeted action of retaliation against the Timorese church, accused of having backed the cause of independence,'' Fides said.

The government has denied massacres are taking place. Officials predicted the situation would stabilize when martial law takes hold under a new general.

Refugees in the camps said their neighbors were killed, their bodies dumped and mutilated in the days after the United Nations announced the referendum's results. Many spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution from militia leaders.

''I saw dozens of people shot,'' said one man, who watched militiamen storm Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo's home in Dili last Monday. ''Militia men wearing black shirts and masks stabbed a young man right in front of me. He bled to death.''

Jose Ramos Horta, who won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize along with Belo, has warned of genocide and demanded international military intervention.

Independent confirmation of the death toll was impossible. Militias have threatened to kill foreign journalists or observers who try to enter East Timor or the refugee camps.

The 82-year-old father of rebel leader Jose Alexandre ''Xanana'' Gusmao was killed by militias in an attack on a Dili suburb. The news was kept from Gusmao, who was freed from house arrest Tuesday, until he finished meeting with diplomats to plead for international peacekeeping forces to rescue his homeland, which is about the same size as Vermont.

Gusmao, widely expected to be the first president of an independent East Timor, wept when he learned the news. The fate of his mother, sister and brother-in-law were uncertain.

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas met with a high-level U.N. delegation, but again rejected demands for U.N. peacekeepers. He did admit, though, that some units in the army were supporting the militias.

''Some rogue elements have been noted, among them, rogue army elements, etc.,'' Alatas said. ''We have had, in the past, difficulties with rogue elements.''

President B.J. Habibie was buffeted by reports that the military had encroached on his powers, sending the stock market and currency into a nose-dive.

U.N. officials said about 200 employees, including police and military officers, have volunteered to stay behind after other U.N. international workers and 167 local staff members were evacuated Friday morning by the Australian air force.

Several hundred locals who had taken refuge in the compound said Thursday night they were heading for the hills to team up with guerrillas who favor of independence from Indonesia for the half-island former Portuguese colony.

Before leaving, Martin, the mission chief, said the security situation had improved, but was still dangerous.

''The state of the city is a disgrace with significant numbers of militia members still roaming the streets with impunity,'' he said. ''Dili is a ghost town with not very much left to loot.''

In Jakarta, hundreds of anti-government student protesters clashed with riot police outside parliament. Four protesters against government actions in East Timor were injured when officers dispersed the demonstrators.

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By MARK LANDLER, September 10, 1999 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/091099timor-jakarta.html

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- When reports swirled here on Wednesday that Indonesia's President, B. J. Habibie, was about to resign, some of his advisers detected the handiwork of the military.

"The military is strongly against allowing peacekeeping troops into East Timor," said Umar Juoro, an economic adviser to Habibie. "It is most likely that people in the military are spreading the rumors."

Juoro's suspicions, which are shared by many in Jakarta, underscore the fact that the army has again emerged as the central player in a national crisis. With East Timor under martial law and with Habibie's ability to control events there doubtful, the fate of the ravaged province rests more than ever with the military and its taciturn supreme commander, Gen. Wiranto.

General Wiranto insists that fresh troops can halt the killing and looting in East Timor without outside help, if given enough time. But military experts said the general was struggling to curb rogue field commanders, who fiercely opposed East Timor's recent independence vote and are taking their revenge by joining with local militias to reduce the province to ashes.

Juoro said they were also trying to bully Habibie into rejecting calls for an international peacekeeping force.

"Wiranto is in a position where the commanders on the ground are humiliated and angry by the rejection of the East Timorese," said Harold Crouch, an expert on the Indonesian military at the Australian National University in Canberra. "He has to move very carefully with these people."

Since the chaos following the vote announcement, General Wiranto has made some progress in asserting his control. On Wednesday, he appointed Maj. Gen. Kiki Syahnakri to restore order and public services. General Syahnakri served 11 years in East Timor and speaks the local language, Tetum. More important, he is regarded as loyal to General Wiranto.

Indonesian officials insisted today that the military was not riven by dissension or bent on vengeance in East Timor.

"The military as an institution, the police as an institution, are not in support of the people burning and killing and looting," the Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, said after meeting a delegation from the United Nations here. "These are criminal activities, and we are going to put a stop to it."

But even Alatas conceded there might be rogue elements among the 300,000 people who make up the armed forces.

Juoro said, "There continues to be a split between the commanders in Jakarta and the field commanders, who are hard-liners. Right now, it appears the hard-liners are quite powerful."

General Wiranto, 53, has been tangling with the hard-liners since May 1998, when he engineered the army's response to a mounting student movement. While General Wiranto supported Suharto, Indonesia's President at the time, he fended off military leaders who wanted to crush the students when it became clear that they were going to drive Suharto from office.

In the 16 months since then, General Wiranto has worked to create a new role for the army in a more democratic Indonesia. He has accepted a diminution of the army's traditional role in politics, agreeing to a cut in its allotted parliamentary seats, to 38 from 75. Officers have also been forced to give up privileged posts in provincial governments and state-owned companies.

Experts said General Wiranto was able to sell this plan to the troops by winning concessions from Suharto's successor, Habibie. Among the most important was that Jakarta give the military a relatively free hand in Indonesia's hot spots, the separatist provinces of East Timor and Aceh.

The army's conduct in both places has been exposed to remorseless scrutiny in the last year. Pictures of mass graves being dug up in Aceh tarnished the military's cherished self-image as a friend of the people. Resistance leaders in East Timor spoke out forcefully against a quarter-century of repression.

Still, the army's leaders clung to their prerogatives. A tour of duty in East Timor is regarded as a prerequisite for senior officers, including General Wiranto, who commanded a battalion there.

That explains why many army officers were outraged when Habibie abruptly announced in January that the Government would allow East Timor to hold a referendum on whether to leave Indonesia. Their anger deepened when the East Timorese voted in overwhelming numbers to break away.

"I think the military thought they would win the vote in East Timor," Crouch said. "They were misled by their intelligence people."

Crouch suggested that General Wiranto might have decided to tolerate a certain level of reprisals in East Timor as a way for his lieutenants to blow off steam. But if so, the strategy has clearly spun out of control. "The damage is done," he said. "They've looted everything in the country."

Experts and even former military officers said they feared that the slaughter in East Timor could set back General Wiranto's efforts to carve a new role for the military in Indonesian society.

"General Wiranto has got to stop the killing," said A. Kemal Idris, a former lieutenant general who once commanded the Army Strategic Reserves. "It will give a bad impression to the world."

General Idris said East Timor was the latest in a series of incidents -- including the unearthing of the Aceh graves and the shooting of students in Jakarta last November -- that had eroded the public's faith in the military. "The people are asking themselves, 'Can we trust the army now?' " he said.

Before this week, experts were talking about how the army had a rare opportunity to influence Indonesia's political future. Despite having fewer seats in Parliament, the army could potentially act as a swing vote in an election between Habibie and his leading opponent, Megawati Sukarnoputri. General Wiranto had often been mentioned as a vice presidential candidate.

But now, Crouch said, "instead of being seen as heroes, the army could be seen as the people who destroyed East Timor."

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By PHILIP SHENON, September 10, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/091099timor-policy.html

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton demanded Thursday that Indonesia permit an international peacekeeping force to try to restore order in East Timor if the Indonesian military is unable to end "this madness" -- the wave of violence that has taken hundreds of lives across the tiny province since it voted for independence last week.

"If Indonesia does not end the violence, it must invite, it must invite the international community to assist in restoring security," the President said at the White House as he prepared to leave for the Asia-Pacific economic summit meeting in New Zealand.

But the President did not threaten an immediate cutoff of economic assistance to Indonesia, as some lawmakers and human rights groups had wanted. Nor did he cut off commercial arms sales to Indonesia, which are expected to total about $16 million over the next year.

Instead, he said that he had ordered the Pentagon to suspend its few formal contacts with the Indonesia military, and that he would consider economic sanctions if the killings in East Timor did not stop. "My own willingness to support future assistance will depend very strongly on the way Indonesia handles this situation," he said.

He said the United States was prepared to assist Australia in its efforts to form an international peacekeeping force for East Timor, an idea Indonesia has rejected.

Clinton made clear that no decision had been made on the extent of American involvement in the mission. The Pentagon has said there are no plans to deploy American ground troops.

The Administration has faced a difficult calculation in deciding how to react to the bloodletting that began after the independence referendum in East Timor. Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed by anti-independence militias backed by elements of the military.

More Roman Catholic priests and nuns became targets in East Timor today in what the Vatican interpreted as a campaign against the church. At the same time, the United Nations sharply reduced the size of its staff in Dili, the capital of East Timor.

Clinton acknowledged Thursday that the United States was unclear on how decisions were being made in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, about how to deal with the killings in East Timor.

He said it was possible that "nobody's got the authority" among Indonesia's military or civilian leaders to quell the violence.

While strongly protesting the violence, the United States wants to preserve a relationship with the civilian Government of President B. J. Habibie, which has been responsible for democratic reforms in Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 200 million people. East Timor, a former Portuguese colony of about 800,000 people, was invaded and annexed by Indonesia in 1975.

Clinton touched on the larger policy dilemma when, at the beginning of his remarks on East Timor, he saluted Indonesia for its "important democratic transformation," adding, "It has the capacity to lift an entire region if it succeeds and to swamp its neighbors in a sea of disorder if it fails."

He noted that Indonesia's economy, which was ravaged by the Asian economic crisis, has begun to rebound in recent months, largely as a result of billions of dollars in American-backed emergency aid through the International Monetary Fund.

"It would be a pity if the Indonesian recovery were crashed by this," he said of the crisis in East Timor. "But one way or the other, it will be crashed by this if they don't fix it, because there will be overwhelming public sentiment to stop the international economic cooperation.

"Precisely because Indonesia's future is important, I am so deeply concerned by the failure of its military to bring a stop to gross abuses now going on in East Timor."

The I.M.F. had already suspended all emergency aid to Indonesia, even before the crisis in East Timor, because of concerns over possible misuse of funds previously sent to Indonesia. And because of the current violence, an observation team from the I.M.F. that was to have gone to Indonesia this month has postponed its trip.

"We believe that, in effect, any future assistance from international financial institutions is effectively cut off as of now," Thomas Pickering, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said today in Congressional testimony.

"There will not be any more forthcoming."

The suspension of military cooperation between the United States and Indonesia is little more than symbolic, since military ties between the two countries have been sharply limited by Congress in recent years because of human rights abuses attributed to the Indonesian armed forces.

The United States ended military exercises with Indonesia last year. As a result of today's action, the United States will freeze a $470,000-a-year military training program between the two countries and a handful of officer exchange programs.

Informal contacts between the two nations will continue. Clinton Administration officials said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, intended to remain in contact with his Indonesian counterpart, Gen. Wiranto, who is considered the key figure in the crisis.

In an appearance before Congress on his nomination for a second two-year term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Shelton said he spoke with General Wiranto by phone on Monday and "laid out for him in no uncertain terms what I thought we needed to see from Indonesia, and specifically from him."

But while he said the United States was alarmed by the violence that has overwhelmed East Timor, General Shelton stressed that American national security interests were not on the line in the tiny territory.

"Certainly if you look at East Timor by itself, I cannot see any national interest there that would be overwhelming -- would call for us to deploy or place U.S. forces on the ground in that area," he said.

The general instead described the crisis in East Timor as a "moral issue" that "very clearly challenges our role as a leader with other nations in that region of the world."