On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Chris Burford wrote:
> Steve wrote clearly,
>
> >Why not start with a demand that the West, i.e. the US, immediately cease
> >all military aid to Indonesai right away. Were the US even willing to do
> >that much, we might see Indonesian generals finding ways to sway the
> >militias to cool it.
> >
> >Indonesia is far more economically and militarily dependent on the US
> >than Yugoslavia. So, yeah, there's a massacre going on in East Timor.
>
> >I'd say, stop all aid would be an appropriate start.
>
>
> Do you mean military aid or economic aid. Only the latter with a threat to
> crash the rupiah again could stop the massacres in time.
>
>
>
> >Sydney Morning Herald
> >Friday, September 3, 1999
> >
> >A$67 (US$47) billion threat will plug boodbath
> >By DAVID JENKINS, Asia Editor in Jakarta
> >
> >The Indonesian Government was in disarray yesterday over the escalating
> >violence in East Timor, with the civilian government of President B. J.
> >Habibie wringing its hands and hinting at a possible foreign peacekeeping
> >force as an increasingly defiant army showed no sign it was willing to stop
> >instigating the unrest.
> >
> >It now seems that nothing short of an international threat to pull the plug
> >on a $US43 billion ($67 billion) IMF bailout of the stricken Indonesian
> >economy will succeed in persuading Habibie to rein in his generals, who
> >have made it plain in private briefings that they are determined to hold
> on to
> >East Timor at all costs.
> >
> >A freeze on the disbursement of emergency aid could have a devastating
> >effect on Indonesia's fragile economy, sending the rupiah into a new decline.
> >And as East Timor edges closer to anarchy, the Indonesian Army (TNI) is
> >looking for all the world like a runaway institution, supporting the
> >policies of Habibie in public but working assiduously to undermine them in
> private.
> >
> >"The only way to avoid a bloodbath and end the conflict is for the world
> >community to apply high-level economic pressure on the central government,"
> >said a Jakarta analyst with high-level army contacts.
>
>
>
>
>
> At 14:10 06/09/99 -0400, WDK wrote:
>
> >I'll bet neither the U.S. nor the U.K. government will lift a
> >finger over the Indonesian government's continuing slaughter in East
> >Timor.
> >
> >Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net
>
>
>
> I am struck by the confidence with which you can identify what is crap in
> this complex and contadictory situation.
>
> You are sure that the imperialist powers are not lifting a finger to
> intervene against the slaughter. But by this logic you are presumably in
> favour of intervention as "not crap"?
>
> By whom? Are you automatically in favour of this call below by the
> Democratic Socialist Party of Australia to send in Australian troops? If
> so, how sure are you that Australian troops will not be the surrogates of
> the British and Americans? Perhaps someone else will confidently denounce
> this as crap and the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia as revisionists.
>
>
>
> >UN/Australia must act NOW to stop bloodbath in East Timor!
> >
> >Statement by the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party
> >(September 6, 1999)
> >
> >The Democratic Socialist Party calls on all supporters of democracy to
> >mobilise to demand that the Australian government insist that the United
> >Nations authorise the immediate dispatch of Australian troops to East
> >Timor. The task of these troops must be to assist the East Timorese
> >resistance forces to stop the current bloodbath being organised by the
> >Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and police (Polri).
>
> etc.
>
>
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London
>
>
>
>