East Timor: UN secretary general Kofi Annan is preparing to send a new UN peacekeeping force to East Timor by early next year, saying that the US and other Security Council members withdrew UN troops too soon, leaving a power vacuum that contributed to the country's descent into chaos last month.
The new UN mission would replace an Australian-led multinational force of about 2,700 troops that intervened in East Timor last month to quell fighting between military factions.
A senior UN envoy, Ian Martin, told reporters on Tuesday that the mission would provide law and order primarily in the capital of Dili in advance of East Timor's May 2007 presidential and legislative elections.
"There is a lesson here for all of us," Mr Annan said. "We had indicated that the UN should remain in East Timor a bit longer, but governments - some governments - were quite keen that we scale back as quickly as possible. Given what has happened, we are reassessing our own presence on the ground."
The decision to prepare an expensive new mission follows a sustained US campaign to shut down UN peacekeeping operations in East Timor since it gained independence in May 2002. Jackie Sanders, a US representative, told the council on Tuesday that the UN would have to consider a "follow-on mission" that would help administer East Timor's elections.
Mr Annan said he is sending an assessment team to East Timor to determine the size of the mission that would be required. He said it would be at least six months before such a force could be sent.
He has also asked the UN high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, to conduct an investigation into the latest upsurge of violence in East Timor. Meanwhile, he appealed to Australia, Portugal, New Zealand and Malaysia to keep their troops there until a UN mission is ready.
A force of about 7,500 UN peacekeepers went to East Timor in 2000, replacing a previous Australian-led multinational force, to help the former Portuguese colony gain independence after more than 25 years of Indonesian rule. The UN Security Council shut down the peacekeeping force in May 2005, leaving a small political mission to help the government run its courts and deliver key services.
At the time, the Bush administration rejected an appeal from Mr Annan to leave a "reassuring presence" of 144 UN peacekeepers to help with the transition. Stuart Holliday, who oversaw UN peacekeeping while he was an ambassador for political affairs at the US mission to the UN, said American diplomats reached a compromise to leave a small mission. "You can't draw the logical conclusion that this would have been prevented with the presence of UN peacekeepers," he said in a recent interview. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)