UN human rights investigators arrive in East Timor.
26 November --
The United Nations expert panel which will investigate
human rights violations in East Timor has arrived in the capital Dili, a UN
spokesman announced today.
Before arriving from Darwin, Australia, yesterday, the five-member
international commission of inquiry met with the former head of the UN
mission in East Timor, Ian Martin. He was accompanied by a senior military
observer who was present at the time of the rampage of violence in East
Timor, as well as the head of the civilian police.
The commission of inquiry also met with the chairman and secretary-general
of the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, which has excavated a mass
grave in West Timor.
According to UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard, an Indonesian police truck
carrying some 26 or 27 bodies went to the border town of Batugade today
and turned over three of those bodies to the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC). "It is thought that the three bodies are those of priests
from the East Timor region of Suai," he said.
Meanwhile, Sergio Vieira de Mello, UN Administrator in East Timor, is
scheduled to sign his first legal instrument in a public ceremony tomorrow in
the presence of independence leader Xanana Gusmao.. Regulation No. 1
establishes the authority of the Transitional Administrator and the legal regime
for the territory.
