U.N. Plans To Send Troops to E. Timor

Goal Is to Help Maintain Order Before Elections

UNITED NATIONS, June 13 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that he has begun preparing to send a new U.N. peacekeeping force to East Timor by early next year, saying that the United States and other Security Council members withdrew U.N. troops too soon, leaving a power vacuum that contributed to the country's descent into chaos last month.

The new U.N. mission would replace an Australian-led multinational force of about 2,700 troops that intervened in East Timor last month to quell fighting between military factions, which threatened the stability of the world's youngest independent nation. A senior U.N. envoy, Ian Martin, told reporters that the mission would provide law and order primarily in Dili, the capital, in advance of East Timor's May 2007 presidential and legislative elections.

"There is a lesson here for all of us," Annan told reporters after a Security Council meeting. "We had indicated that the U.N. should remain in East Timor a bit longer, but governments -- some governments -- were quite keen that we scale back as quickly as possible. Given what has happened, we are reassessing our own presence on the ground."

The decision to prepare a new mission -- which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run and would require Security Council approval -- follows a sustained U.S. campaign to shut down U.N. peacekeeping operations in East Timor since it gained independence in May 2002.

A U.S. representative, Jackie W. Sanders, told the council on Tuesday that the United Nations would have to consider a "follow-on mission" that would help administer East Timor's elections. But she stopped short of endorsing the need for a new peacekeeping mission.

Annan said he is sending an assessment team to East Timor to determine the size of the mission that would be required. He said it would be at least six months before a peacekeeping force could be sent. But he added that "it is obvious that the U.N. will have to go back . . . in a much larger form than we are at the moment."

Annan has also asked the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, to conduct an investigation into the latest upsurge of violence in East Timor. Meanwhile, he appealed to Australia, Portugal, New Zealand and Malaysia to keep their troops there until a U.N. mission is ready to take over.

A force of about 7,500 U.N. peacekeepers went to East Timor in 2000, replacing a previous Australian-led multinational force, to help the former Portuguese colony gain independence after more than 25 years of Indonesian rule. The U.N. Security Council shut down the peacekeeping force in May 2005, leaving a small political mission to help the government run its courts and deliver key services.

At the time, the Bush administration rejected an appeal from Annan to leave a "reassuring presence" of 144 U.N. peacekeepers to help with the transition. Stuart W. Holliday, who oversaw U.N. peacekeeping while he was an ambassador for political affairs at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said American diplomats reached a compromise to leave a small mission. "You can't draw the logical conclusion that this would have been prevented with the presence of U.N. peacekeepers," he said in a recent interview.

Tensions erupted this spring after a group of 594 soldiers fired from the military organized demonstrations against what they contended was discrimination against soldiers from the country's western region. More than 14,000 civilians fled from their homes as the protests turned violent.

Despite the rise in violence, the United States pressed again for the United Nations to shut down its political mission there. East Timor's foreign minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, appealed to the Security Council in early May for a "modest yet robust" force of about 150 U.N. police officers to be sent to his country to help restore calm in advance of the elections. "The decision is in your hands," he said. "And this decision will decisively influence the course of events in my country, for good or bad."

The U.S. representative at the meeting, William J. Brencick, said that the United States was not prepared to support an even more modest U.N. proposal to reinforce its political mission in the run-up to the elections. Three weeks later, East Timor's military and police force fell apart as fighting broke out.