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DATE=9/8/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=INDONESIA / TIMOR - L
NUMBER=2-266264
BYLINE=PATRICIA NUNAN
DATELINE=JAKARTA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
/// Re-running for AVSTAR system ///
INTRO: United Nations officials say they have received 
reports of a massacre in the Indonesian province of 
West Timor - days after three U-N
Aid workers were murdered and the U-N evacuated its 
staff. Patricia Nunan in Jakarta reports the news 
comes as the Indonesia government held an emergency 
meeting on the West Timor crisis. 
TEXT: United Nations officials say as many as 20 
people in the village of Betun may have been killed 
Thursday by militias opposed to East Timor's 
independence. So far, however, officials say they do 
not know if the dead are East Timorese or Indonesians. 
/// OPT /// An unidentified Indonesian military 
officer in West Timor denied a massacre took place in 
a telephone interview with Reuters News Agency.  The 
officer says 11 people had been killed in an 
unreported incident earlier this week.  /// END OPT 
///
It is hard to gauge the full extent of the situation 
there since all aid workers evacuated West Timor 
Thursday in response to militia violence. 
Betun is south of Atambua where three UN workers were 
murdered Wednesday. It was the worst attack on U-N 
personnel since they arrived in the region
last year after pro-Jakarta militia groups virtually 
destroyed East Timor in a two-week campaign of terror. 
The militias were reacting to East Timor's vote for 
independence from Indonesia. The chaos prompted 
hundreds of thousands of East Timorese to flee for the 
safety of refugee camps in West Timor.
With the withdrawal of the U-N and other aid 
organizations, the roughly 120-thousand refugees who 
remain in West Timor face a suspension of aid. One U-N 
official said the refugees are now living in a 
"hostage-like" situation. 
Meanwhile in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, Vice 
President Megawati Sukarnoputri chaired a special 
cabinet meeting called in response to the militia
violence.
Ministers say they will send one more battalion of 
soldiers to West Timor. That is in addition to the one 
infantry battalion and one police company the 
government said Thursday it would deploy in the 
region.
The renewed violence in West Timor is the first crisis 
to face Indonesia's new cabinet, which was formed last 
month. 
Cabinet members have condemned the murder of the aid 
workers and have promised to work with the United 
Nations to investigate the incident.
However some officials have also voiced concern that 
the violence was an attempt by political enemies of 
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to embarrass 
the government while the president attends the U-N 
Millennium Summit in New York. (signed) 
NEB/HK/PN/JO/PLM 
08-Sep-2000 09:43 AM EDT (08-Sep-2000 1343 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.