When the Indonesian military and the pro-integration leaders of East Timor laid their plans to unleash murder and mayhem on the former Portuguese colony if it dared to vote for independence, they probably thought they could get away with it.
After all, for 24 years they have conducted their ruthless suppression of national opinion there. What they did not bargain for on this occasion was the fury of international opinion.
World leaders were enraged at the cynicism of the Indonesian leadership and the cruelty visited on innocent people. The forced movement of population, the massacres of refugees, the killing of priests and nuns, the thuggish treatment of one of the world's most respected figures, Bishop Carlos Belo, and the humiliation of the UN mission in East Timor created an outrage which few governments could withstand.
By a timely coincidence, world leaders were gathering in Auckland, New Zealand, as demands for a peacekeeping force in East Timor were growing more insistent. Indonesia found itself facing a diplomatic and economic abyss. Relations with its closest ally, Australia, crumbled, while President Clinton, his language toughening with every day, suspended military contacts and sales and said it was "imperative" that Indonesia invite a peacekeeping force without delay.
Contact with the International Monetary Fund, on which the Indonesian economy depends, was suspended. Indonesia overnight had become a pariah nation.
The first signs that Jakarta was beginning to crack came on Saturday in Dili. There the Indonesian armed forces chief, Gen Wiranto, who was accompanying a UN Security Council delegation on a tour of the shattered East Timor capital, surprised everyone by saying that "bearing in mind the international pressure for a zero accident rate in East Timor as soon as possible, we cannot rule out the possibility of accelerating the arrival of the peacekeeping force". But he seemed to retract this later and the Indonesian ambassador told the UN Security Council on Saturday evening that such a force at this time was not appropriate.
In fact Indonesian government policy might already have shifted, but he could not say so in New York as the Indonesian people had to be informed first. For some days President Habibie had been overwhelmed with angry telephone calls from world leaders. In a revealing vignette on Indonesian television, the President was seen giggling with embarrassment while the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, ticked him off about his responsibilities.
Mr Annan had shocked Indonesian leaders by telling them to accept immediately a peacekeeping force for East Timor or face responsibility for what would amount to crimes against humanity. The Indonesian President is not a tough, cold-blooded nationalist like Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, but a reformer who has freed the press and pushed the nation towards democracy.
The pressure was clearly becoming unbearable. Yesterday morning he took yet another call from Mr Annan, this time to hear of the verbal mugging of Indonesia at the overnight session of the UN Security Council in New York.
Events began to move very quickly. In Auckland, at the APEC summit, Australian Prime Minister Mr John Howard was almost willing an international force into being. Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Britain, Canada, the Philippines and Portugal, he said, had given firm commitments to participate in a UN-mandated force if Indonesia consented, while the US, Sweden, Thailand and France had agreed in principle to give logistical support.
In Jakarta, President Habibie suddenly announced that he would convene an emergency cabinet meeting at the presidential palace at 4 p.m. The meeting was lengthy and was clearly a stormy one, but the decision may have been made before it began, as the President's aides had earlier booked national television for an address to the nation at 7 p.m. local time.
The time of the broadcast was put back several times, and reporters were told that Mr Habibie was again talking to the UN Secretary General on the telephone, with Gen Wiranto, Justice Minister Muladi and Foreign Minister Mr Ali Alatas taking part.
When the ministers emerged, and Mr Habibie walked to the podium at 8.10 p.m. to make his announcement to a room packed with 300 reporters, he was the only one smiling.
Gen Wiranto looked extremely sombre, in contrast to his mood that morning, when at a luncheon he had taken the microphone and crooned the old American hit song Feelings when asked how he felt about the East Timorese.
Mr Alatas, who had belligerently defended the decision not to invite a peacekeeping force into East Timor until "phase three", looked as if he was suffering an attack of heartburn.
Phases one and two refer to the referendum campaign and its aftermath; phase three is the period after the ratification of the vote of the East Timor people by the Indonesian parliament in November.
Mr Habibie last night met the five-member delegation from the UN Security council for a final briefing before they returned to New York. They had been stunned at the devastation they saw in Dili on Saturday.
The Namibian member of the delegation, Mr Martin Adjaba, said it was "very shocking" and that he was not impressed by assurances from Maj Gen Kiki Syahnakri, head of the emergency military command in East Timor, that violence and crime had significantly declined.
In Dili, Gen Wiranto had addressed pro-Indonesian leaders, including Jakarta-appointed governor Mr Abilio Soares and the leader of the Aitarak militia, Mr Eurico Guterres, and told them: "I ask for restraint from all of you and that you would refrain from acts of violence which would only destroy the East Timorese people."
The general has played the role of peacekeeper before, but such soft words to the leader of a paramilitary group which had murdered, burned and looted made a poor impression on the UN delegation.
Yesterday's decision was a major humiliation for the general, even if he was the first to signal publicly that it would be made. He and Mr Alatas had taken the lead in opposing a peacekeeping force at this time. Mr Habibie, often dismissed as a fool, had kept quiet and had the last word. He was almost written off a few days ago when Gen Wiranto got his way over the cabinet by declaring martial law in East Timor.