The UN should help oversee elections in East Timor and stay involved in the nation for at least a decade, the foreign minister said yesterday, noting that restoring order and building a democracy will take time and money.
Jose Ramos-Horta said it was in no one's interest to see East Timor -- where riots, looting arson and gunfire have engulfed the capital -- turn into a "failed state."
"I believe that East Timor, even in light of current events, is still a success story," Ramos-Horta said in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal's Asian edition.
"The significance of the events of the past month has more to do with the depths of instability from which East Timor has risen, rather than the heights of security it has yet to aspire to," he wrote.
Some 600 striking soldiers were dismissed in March, triggering clashes with loyalist forces and leading to gang warfare in the capital last month in which at least 30 people have been killed.
More than 100,000 people fled their homes to makeshift shelters and camps in Dili as gangs have terrorized entire neighborhoods. It is the worst wave of unrest since East Timor's bloody break from Indonesian rule seven years ago.
Ramos-Horta pointed out that the violence has been almost exclusively limited to the capital, although an attack on a provincial office of the ruling Fretilin party on Wednesday night raised concerns that it could spread.
The UN special representative in Dili, Sukehiro Hasegawa, flew yesterday to Baucau, where Colonel Lere Anan Timur, chief of staff of the East Timorese army, vowed to stay out of politics.
Hasegawa said the UN is "here to help and assist in resolving the dispute" and is confident that the achievements made since independence will not be lost.
Timur responded that the defense force will follow the orders of any democratically elected government.
The UN Security Council is expected next week to consider dispatching a large police force to East Timor. Ramos-Horta said, that in hindsight, UN forces likely left too early.
"The lesson of this tragic episode is that the international community cannot look for cost-saving formulas when addressing post-conflict nation building," he said. "It is essential that the UN stay engaged in East Timor, in some form, for at least a decade. It's in no one's interest to let another poor country become a failed state."
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