Amnesty International warned the United Nations yesterday against big cutbacks in its mission in East Timor, saying the rule of law and human rights could suffer after independence.
The south-east Asian territory is expected to become formally independent from Indonesia early in 2002 after holding its first democratic elections on August 30th.
The London-based human rights organisation said a mission it sent to East Timor earlier this year "found that law and order is barely being maintained, justice is not being administered effectively and the human rights of the East Timorese people cannot be guaranteed".
Considerable international support would be needed over the next few years to help the future East Timor government draft laws for protecting human rights and train its police, the military, the judiciary and new government officials, Amnesty said in a report issued at UN headquarters in New York.
The report was released as the UN Security Council considered changes in the future role of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, known as UNTAET.
The Security Council is to hold a public debate on Monday to consider a report by the Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan. The report concluded that the mission should be scaled back, but peacekeeping forces had to remain on alert against militias in neighbouring West Timor as long as Indonesia failed to disband them. The Security Council had asked Mr Annan last January to consider the cutbacks issue.
The elections are to take place on the second anniversary of a 1999 vote in which the East Timorese overwhelmingly chose to split from Indonesia after 23 years of rule. After that vote, pro-Jakarta militias killed thousands and forced many more into Indonesia's West Timor. About 60,000 Timorese refugees remain in West Timorese camps.
Human rights groups have urged Indonesia's new President, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, chosen by parliament earlier this week, to clamp down on the militias after taking power. But they say such a clampdown appears unlikely.
Ms Megawati has been a consistent opponent of East Timorese independence.
Diplomats said Security Council members were examining ways of cutting the mission budget, now financed out of the dues paid by the 189 UN membernations.
Mr Annan's report said that while East Timor would require substantial international support even after the elections, it was clear that there would be a substantial reduction in the overall presence.
Ms Megawati meanwhile stayed away from the commemoration yesterday of a 1996 military-backed raid on her party's former headquarters, which left at least five people dead and scores missing.
Hundreds of veteran supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle gathered at the old headquarters in central Jakarta to mark the anniversary of the raid, hailed as the baptism by fire of the country's democracy movement during the last decade of the Suharto dictatorship.