Indonesian police have arrested soldiers in connection with the murders of three UN refugee agency workers in West Timor earlier this month, and the preceding killing of a militia leader that sparked the attack on the UN staff.
The move suggests Indonesia is at last responding to threats of international isolation if it fails to rein in the militias holding sway in West Timor.
Their incursions disrupt and terrorise newly independent East Timor and keep more than 120,000 East Timorese in squalid refugee camps along the border between the two parts of Timor. Aid agencies also say food for the refugees is running low, though the government denies this.
Western diplomats believe the arrests, announced yesterday by the Indonesian Attorney General, Mr Marzuki Darusman, have confirmed their repeated assertion that not only are elements of the military helping the militias but that the armed forces are fractured, with some key generals not obeying President Abdurrahman Wahid.
The three workers for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were killed on September 6th in the border town of Atambua.
They were killed when hundreds of militiamen attacked their office. They were hacked to death and their bodies set on fire. With the security authorities standing by, the mob then ran amok in the town.
Mr Darusman said six people were being picked up. "The identification of the suspects has been made and they are in the process of being summoned and interrogated," he said. "They include elements of the military."
Seven others have been arrested in connection with the death on September 5th of a militia leader, Olivio Maruk. These also include members of the armed forces.
Militia leaders said the rampage and the killing of the UN workers were sparked by the murder and castration the previous day of Mr Maruk.
Analysts believe he may have been killed because he had been named as a suspect in the investigation into the destruction wreaked on East Timor last year and might have implicated senior soldiers when questioned.
The UN has said it will not send staff back to West Timor to help the refugees until the militias have been disbanded.
A military spokesman said yesterday negotiations had begun with gang leaders.