Australia airlifts troops to the Solomon Islands, again
Meanwhile, US wants UN to guarantee justice between Indonesia and East Timor.
Australia's swift reaction to the sniper killing of one of its soldiers serving with an international peacekeeping force in the troubled Solomon Islands on Wednesday will likely quell any further turmoil.
One hundred rapid-response soldiers based in the northern state of Queensland are on their way to Solomon Islands in a
show of force, reports
The Australian Broadcasting, Corp.
The Sydney Morning Herald quotes
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty as saying, "the attack appeared to be the work of a sniper with the deliberate intention of targeting police."
Reuters reports that the troops were to
fly into the city in three waves on Thursday to ensure South Pacific peacekeepers were able to perform their duties safely.
The arrival of extra troops would 'reassure the community that the peacekeepers would remain,' said Solomon Islands Police Commissioner Bill Morrell.
News of the troops deployment was greeted positively by Solomon Islanders, especially with the Christmas season commencing, said Mr. Morrell.Morrell also said he hoped the officer's murder was "an
isolated incident and not a return to the gang lawlessness before the arrival of the Regional Assistance Mission for the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in mid-2003, reports
Reuters.
Australia is the lead member of
RAMSI, a peacekeeping force comprised of personnel from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, and Nauru.
The shooting occurred in Honiara, an area
formerly controlled by armed gangs who were disbanded with the arrival of an Australian-led regional 2,225-strong force of soldiers and police in mid-2003, reports
The Scotsman.
The peacekeepers were sent to the Solomon Islands to "
strengthen, indeed virtually rebuild, the Solomon Islands' Police and Government, both of which had become captive to corrupt and well-armed former militia members and criminals," says
ABC Newsonline. At the time, the Solomons had become synonymous with the "idea of a failed state."
Commissioner Keelty said the vast majority of Solomons' people welcomed the RAMSI's peacekeepers but that "there was clearly a minority which was seeking revenge for the work of RAMSI, which has made more than 4,000 arrests and seized more than 3,700 weapons," since its arrival, reports the
Sydney Morning Herald.
Meanwhile, in other developments in the region, the still unresolved matter of reconciliation between Indonesia and East Timor surfaced this week.
On Tuesday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced in New York the creation of the
Commission on Truth and Friendship between Indonesia and East Timor to "heal wounds between the two countries left by the 1999 violence in which Jakarta's military and associated militias laid waste to East Timor," reports the
The Financial Times. A month ago, the UN Security Council
expressed concern with Indonesia's failure "to punish those responsible for the violence that followed East Timor's vote for independence" reports
The Washington Post.
Indonesian gangs supported by elements in the Indonesian army killed about 1,000 East Timorese during a 1999 rampage triggered by a referendum in which East Timor voted to break free from Jakarta after 24 years of "brutal military rule." (See a special
Christian Science Monitor series, "
A Brutal Exit: Battalion 745.")
Reaction to Mr. Annan's announcement was mixed.
Agence France Presse reports the United States "
welcomed creation of a joint Indonesia-East Timor commission on the 1999 bloodshed in the former Portuguese colony."
But the US made clear the
necessity of a separate UN inquiry as well, reports the
BBC.
The US has said a planned joint Indonesia-East Timor commission on the 1999 violence in East Timor should not supplant designs for a UN inquiry. Human rights groups point to the fact that Jakarta established a special court on East Timor which began hearing trials in 2002 but the work of that court has been "labeled a sham by the international community," reports the
Financial Times.
Of the 18 military officers and civilians tried by the court, all but one have been exonerated. The conviction of the final suspect, a prominent militia leader, is being appealed.
Jakarta has also refused to co-operate with a parallel process in East Timor under which UN-backed prosecutors have indicted almost 400 people, including senior Indonesian military officers.
Indonesia has "succeeded so far in avoiding any accountability", the
Financial Times quotes Joaquim Fonseca, an East Timorese rights activist, as saying.
'If the UN gives in to the idea of this "truth and friendship commission", we can give up on seeing justice done.' More than 300,000 people were displaced at the time. An Australian-led force helped end the fighting. The UN administered the territory for 2 1/2 years before handing it to the Timorese on May 20, 2002.
The Guardian
dismisses Jakarta's motive in forming the commission as a means to "encourage the UN to abandon its plan for a panel of experts to assess what the two countries have done to prosecute those involved in the atrocities."
East Timor has indicted almost 400 people. More than 90 have been tried, while most of the rest, including many serving and retired generals, are living comfortably in Indonesia, which has no intention of handing them over for prosecution.
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Jim Bencivenga
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