The United States threw its weight yesterday behind a European Union proposal to launch a UN inquiry into killings and other crimes in East Timor, but diplomats said Indonesia was trying to quash the initiative.
Indonesian diplomats, who have strong backing from Asian allies, were negotiating with western member-states of the UN human rights body to avoid a foreign inquiry, diplomats said.
Voting at the UN Commission on Human Rights, which has 53 member-governments, tends to be along regional lines and the EU will find it difficult to obtain agreement on an international fact-finding mission.
Portugal, the former colonial power which called for the two-day emergency session in Geneva, is determined to win agreement on an international investigation.
Mr George Moose, the US ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, expressed support for the UN investigation. He said it would support Indonesia's own national inquiry into the bloodshed which erupted after the pro-independence ballot.
"The violent events which have occurred in East Timor in recent weeks and evidence of serious violations of human rights require a systematic and credible investigation. "Accordingly, we support the proposal made by the High Commissioner of Human Rights [Mrs Mary Robinson] to create an international panel or commission to establish the facts regarding the events in East Timor," Mr Moose added.
Australia and New Zealand, which are observer states without voting rights, were also due to speak in favour of an inquiry.
The draft EU text calls on the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, to set up a panel of experts to document crimes by pro-Jakarta militias with alleged complicity by Indonesian forces. Similar commissions led to the establishment of UN war crimes tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
On Thursday, members of the UN commission including Japan, China, India and Pakistan indicated in speeches they would try to block any inquiry which could lead to a war crimes tribunal.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said in Sydney yesterday it believed 35 young East Timorese men were killed and their bodies dumped overboard from a refugee ship sailing from Dili to Kupang in West Timor.
"There is credible evidence that 35 East Timorese were killed on September 11th on board a ship, the Dobon Solo, which was leaving Dili for Kupang that day," said Amnesty in a report on atrocities in West and East Timor. "According to an eye-witness account, the bodies of the victims were dumped overboard."
The US human rights body, the Carter Centre, also reported a case of an East Timorese man being killed by militia on a refugee boat from Kupang to Bali on September 13th. It said two men were severely beaten and one taken away.
"A self-proclaimed member of the Aitarak militia entered the room a short time later and boasted to the wife of the missing man, `I wouldn't bother looking for your husband because I killed him myself'," the Carter Centre said in a statement.