Dili, 24 April 2000
On his trip to the Asean countries, the Transitional Administrator, Sergio Vieira de Mello, is flying to Malaysia tomorrow, where he will meet on Wednesday the Malaysian Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and other senior government officials.
On Wednesday night the SRSG will fly to Singapore, and will meet the Singaporean Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs the next day.
Both Malaysia and Singapore are engaged at many levels with UNTAET (there are more than 150 people from both these countries working here) and the Transitional Administrator is visiting them on their request, to inform on the current state of affairs of East Timor.
Earlier, the SRSG who will be back on the 28th visited Japan and China.
DSRSG ACCOMPANIES THE PRIME MINISTER OF PORTUGAL
The Deputy SRSG, Jean-Christian Cady, continued today to accompany the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Guterres, on his visit to East Timor.
On Saturday they visited Baucau, attended the Easter mass and stayed overnight at Bishop Nascimento s residence; on Sunday they went to Aileu and Suai, and today they spent part of the day in the enclave of Oecussi.
At the arrival of the Prime Minister, on Saturday, the Deputy SRSG said that UNTAET is grateful to Portugal for the longstanding support it has provided to East Timor, and the continued generosity as a major donor to the UNTAET Trust Fund.
Tomorrow, the Prime Minister is meeting the Timorese population at 7.30 at the ginasium, in Dili.
FIRST SIX MONTHS OF UNTAET
The Timorese are the ones who, ultimately, will determine the success of UNTAET, but six months after the establishment of the Transitional Administration, very solid foundations are already in place to build on and to make further progress, said today Fabrizio Hochschild, the Special Assistant to the SRSG, in a briefing to the media.
After six months, 17 regulations were approved, the taxes are being collected, the Police Academy is training the first class, the Civil Service Commission is having regular deliberating sessions, four thousand Timorese civil servants are under payroll, the first trial is expected to start in late May, and more than 150 exhumations took place.
The priorities for the next six months are: strengthen the consultation and participation mechanisms of the Timorese at all levels; employment (labor offices in most of the district capitals are going to open soon); the beginning of the constitution process; the downsizing of the Peacekeeping force if the present security situation is maintained; the future of Falintil and the benchmarks for the withdrawal of UNTAET.
The Secretary-General made the point when he was here that we don t need to work to some sort of an arbitrary timeline two years, three years, five years, six months. But we have to agree with the Timorese on what they would like to see us achieve before which it would indicate that the time is right for UNTAET to phase out, said Hochschild.
TIMORESE TO ASSESS AID PROJECTS
A team of nine East Timorese NGO representatives commissioned by UNTAET will conduct an assessment of the humanitarian assistance projects conducted by the international aid agencies in East Timor.
On the basis of two samples, Manatuto and Suai, the evaluation will look into projects providing aid in shelter, health services and food. The mission intends to scrutinize the effectiveness of the assistance from the beneficiaries point of view by listening to how the population sees the aid projects in the three areas.
The final report of the team will be written by the end of May and will be used by UNTAET as a material for the Lisbon conference to be held in June.
The idea for the evaluation came from Timorese NGOs and was accepted and supported by UNTAET, which views it as a great tool of direct assessment of community appreciation of different projects. The mission is likely to be the first of many similar missions to assess other projects that are being implemented or will be implemented in the future.
LABOR WEEK
A series of events organized by UNTAET to mark the upcoming Labor Day, 1 May, will start tomorrow with the beginning of a workshop on labor law and employment rights in East Timor. The workshop will include participation by international labor experts, representatives of workers and employers in East Timor, as well as UNTAET representatives and members of Timorese civil society.
The remainder of the Labor Week program includes the official announcement of Labor Day as a public holiday in East Timor. On Wednesday there will be a town hall meeting where CNRT President Xanana Gusmão and UNTAET Chief of Staff Nagalingam Parameswaran will answer questions on employment.
The main events that are to come on 28 April and 1 May are the graduation of 16 Timorese employment officers and inauguration of the first Employment Service center in Dili. The Center will be a place where unemployed will be able to come and present their details and qualifications, undergo an interview by the employment officers and make themselves available for the potential employers. On 1 May a drainage cleaning TEP will be signed to employ up to 1,000 workers.
AUTOPSY OF PASSABE EXHUMATIONS
The forensic experts of the Human Rights Division have completed the autopsy of three of the 20 bodies that were exhumed last week in Passabe, in the enclave of Oecussi, and have identified the gender and the age the victims.
The three are male, one is about 18 years old, another 45, and a third is expected to be between 35 to 40.
The first two were killed by machetes, one in the neck, and the other in the shoulder. The cause of death of the third could not determined because the team only found some body remains.
