United Nations officials yesterday celebrated an almost incredible 98.6 per cent turnout in Monday's referendum on the future of East Timor, perhaps the most successful plebiscite ever organised by the international organisation.
However, armed pro-Indonesian militias returned to the streets of the capital Dili, heightening tensions in the run-up to the announcement of the result this weekend.
Also overshadowing the international celebrations was a report that the death toll among UN-recruited polling staff on Monday had risen to three. The former Australian deputy prime minister, Mr Tim Fischer, travelling in East Timor as an observer, reported that in addition to the stabbing to death of UN poll worker Joao Lopez Gomez at the mountain town of Gleno south of Dili, two other locally-recruited staff had been killed there.
The UN headquarters at the nearby town of Emera was besieged yesterday by armed pro-Indonesian militias who for eight hours prevented a UN convoy carrying 100 UN staff and 50 local workers from leaving. Shots were fired, and staff lay on the floor, but no one was hurt, according to Mr David Wimhurst, spokesman for the United Nations Mission in East Timor, UNAMET.
The stand-off was resolved when the UN chief of civilian police, Commissioner Alan Mills of Australia, and senior Indonesian police officers, arrived at the scene by helicopter and negotiated with the militia leaders, and the convoy arrived in Dili just after dark.
Despite this setback, all ballot boxes from 850 polling stations were safely collected and brought to a museum building near Dili airport where counting will get under way today, guarded by Indonesian police and members of Civpol, the unarmed UN civilian police force.
The outcome of the vote, widely expected to favour independence over autonomy, will be known before Saturday, UN officials predicted. In the face of intimidation by pro-Indonesian militias, 98.6 per cent of the registered voters in the former Portuguese colony turned out to say whether they wanted autonomy within Indonesia or a complete break with the country which sent in a brutal invasion force in 1975.
But major hurdles lie ahead. Tension is rising steadily in anticipation of the announcement of a pro-independence verdict when the counting is completed in the coming days. The pro-integration governor of East Timor, Mr Abilio Soares, warned the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, yesterday that the day of the result would be "a very heavy, charged day".
He should know. Mr Soares, an old opponent of the resistance movement Fretelin from pre-invasion days, has been working hand in glove with the militias since they began their campaign of intimidation after Indonesia's President B.J. Habibie announced in January that East Timor would be allowed to choose its own future.
He met Mr Andrews in the colonial Kantor Gubernatur, the old Portuguese palace on the sea front, where a picture of the Virgin and Child on his office wall indicated the Governor's own Catholic and East Timorese origins.
"I hope the result of the popular consultation will be accepted by all the people of East Timor," the Governor said, speaking in Portuguese with Mr Tom Bolster of the Department of Foreign Affairs acting as interpreter. "The day of the announcement will be a very heavy, charged day. We hope we will have the full understanding of the European Union but it will be a very difficult day."
The Governor's demeanour was markedly different from that on the bloody day in April when his first meeting with Mr Andrews took place against a background of killings in nearby streets, as militias whom he had addressed earlier attacked pro-independence supporters. On that occasion he talked impatiently of continuing to fight for integration whatever the result of the referendum. Yesterday he spoke regretfully of the killing by militias of a member of the UNAMET polling staff. "I feel very bad about it and as a representative of the Indonesian Government I hope that this will be an end of it and that these kind of things will not happen again."
He said that if autonomy was rejected the matter would be entrusted to the United Nations. Asked if he would work with the leader of the Falantil resistance, Mr Xanana Gusmao in a future government, he said, if independence came: "I would not wish to participate in any East Timor government - perhaps I will take a break and have a rest."
One should perhaps not rush to the conclusion that this means Mr Soares is conceding defeat, though the referendum result is likely to rob his arguments of any moral authority they might previously have had.
Mr Andrews leaves Dili this morning for Jakarta and will meet Indonesian President B.J. Habibie before reporting to EU foreign ministers on the referendum in Helsinki on Saturday. Armed militias yesterday briefly picketed the airport and the port, seemingly intent on intimidating any of their own potential supporters from trying to leave in anticipation of a pro-independence result.
At the airport, Mr Eurico Gutterres, commander of the Aitarak militia, said: "Whoever they are, pro-independence or pro-autonomy, the political elite must stay in East Timor and shoulder their responsibilities."
When a ferry from Kupang in West Timor arrived at Dili harbour during the night, militias fired shots as they jostled passengers trying to scramble aboard.
There are other signs that the forces of anarchy which the militia leaders and their Indonesian sponsors have unleashed are now switching to new tactics. Yesterday the militias and their political counterparts boycotted the inaugural meeting in Dili of a special commission created by UNAMET comprising ten members each from the pro-autonomy and pro-independence camps and five UN appointees, designed to ensure stability in the period after the referendum. This type of behaviour has increased fears that, sensing defeat, they are preparing the ground for a rejection of the outcome of the popular consultation. The main pro-Indonesian group on this committee was to have been the United Front for East Timor Autonomy, a coalition of anti-integration forces which brings together the pro-Indonesian militias, the PPI, and their political wing the FPDK led by Mr Basilio Araujo. They issued a statement justifying their boycott on the grounds that the voting had been conducted improperly, listing 35 incidents in Dili alone where they said the UN had interfered with the vote. They claimed large numbers of foreign observers had encouraged people to vote for independence.
As UNAMET spokesman David Wimhurst pointed out, they have not filed any written complaints. But that is not the point. This is propaganda and the worrying thing is the end to which it will be used. An outright rejection of the vote could be the prelude to some sort of coup. Before the referendum there were prominent acts of reconciliation and promises from the militias to turn in their weapons, which raised hopes that he transition would be peaceful. However as Bishop Carlos Belo tells visitors, including Mr Andrews, "they are not sincere".
Anyone who doubted that need only have walked along the stretch of seafront between Bishop Belo's house and the Kantor Gubernatur yesterday.
Dozens of militiamen, many carrying automatic weapons, machetes, swords, knives and clubs, and were stoning the already-wrecked office of CNRT, the National Council for East Timorese Resistance with impunity . So much for the much-heralded agreement on Sunday - publicised with embraces and jokes - between militia leader Eurico Gutterres and a Falantil commander, under which the militias said that they would only carry arms within cantonment areas. Observers here conclude that the reason they didn't try to stop the referendum taking place at all was that orders had been received from above - i.e. from General Wiranto, chief of the Indonesian armed forces, whose picture adorns the walls of police barracks throughout East Timor. The question is, what orders will the general give for the heavy and charged day the result is announced?