World

U.N. Takes Control Of E. Timor

October 25, 1999 / 1:48 PM EDT / AP

The United Nations formally took control of East Timor on Tuesday, and leaders of the new transition team acknowledged they face enormous challenges in rebuilding the ravaged territory.

Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese are still displaced, building materials are in short supply as the rainy season sets in, and virtually all of the territory's institutions -- schools, courts, police -- will have to be built almost from scratch. No one even knows what kind of currency the new nation-to-be will use.

Â"All the functions of government, bit by bit, have to be built up,Â" said Ian Martin. Martin will temporarily head the team that took up its duties Tuesday, hours after the Security Council unanimously approved the U.N. takeover.

At the same time, the Security Council approved sending more than 9,000 troops to maintain order, the biggest U.N. peacekeeping operation in five years. It will be one of the United Nations' most expensive such operations ever, with first-year costs alone estimated at up to $1 billion.

The U.N. takeover puts the former Portuguese colony on the road to long-sought independence, and effectively marks the end of a bloody guerrilla war that frustrated international mediation efforts for decades.

The U.N. troops are to replace a 16-nation force that arrived last month to restore order after pro-Indonesian militias went on a rampage of looting, destruction and intimidation in the wake of an Aug. 30 independence referendum.

The U.N. resolution authorizes a 9,150-member peacekeeping force, including 200 military observers, to replace the multinational force now on the ground. A 1,640-strong international police force also will be dispatched.

Many of the nations involved in the current peacekeeping effort will be part of the new U.N. force as well, peacekeeping spokesman Col. Mark Kelly said in Dili, East Timor's capital. Handing over of peacekeeping duties is expected to take two to four months.

The U.N. takeover comes amid a struggle to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in East Timor, where nearly half the residents fled or were driven from their homes in the violence after the independence vote.

Â"We are very concerned about the imminence of the rainy season,Â" said Ross Mountain, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator in the territory.

Several hundred thousand people are still in hiding in East Timor's mountainous interior. About 240,000 others are still at refugee camps in neighboring West Timor, which is controlled by Indonesia.

Tens of thousands of people have returned home, and aid agencies have made great strides in providing food and medical care, but shelter is the big worry now, Mountain said.

Independence is probably two or three years away for East Timor, which was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 and annexed the following year. The United Nations never recognized the annexation and has been trying to resolve the territory's statuever since.

Pro-independence East Timorese rebels waged a guerrilla war from the forests against a vastly superior Indonesian force. About 200,000 East Timorese, mainly civilians, died in the 24-year conflict.