Another U.N. disaster

Despite his generally good relations with the White House and administration, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has raised the stakes. He is well aware that Washington and others will be looking for people to shift blame to. He has supported Ian Martin, and in an action unprecedented for the United Nations, even authorized the evacuation of local U.N. employees. (In stark contrast, many Rwandan Tutsi staff were left to their fate.)

Annan urged Jakarta to accept the military help offered by Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, and significantly warned, "If it refuses to do so, it cannot escape responsibility for what could amount to ... crimes against humanity. In any event, those responsible for these crimes must be called to account."

Still up in the air is the question of whether the members of the U.N. Security Council would authorize intervention, Kosovo style, in the teeth of Indonesian disapproval. Most ambassadors agree that there is no legal bar to involvement. In fact, legally, because East Timor is still recognized by the United Nations as a Portuguese colony, the Portuguese could invite anyone they'd like to intervene.

If the United Nations was willing to intervene in Kosovo, why not East Timor? That is the embarrassing question that haunts the White House. In the case of Kosovo, there was the embarrassment of no U.N. resolution, since Russia and China were unwilling to lend their approval to NATO's military action.

In the case of East Timor, there is indeed a U.N. resolution condemning the Indonesian invasion in 1975. With the possible exception of Australia, no country in the world recognizes East Timor as Indonesian territory. In fact, legally, it is still under Portuguese sovereignty, although Lisbon is not actually pushing very hard to take it over.

So why was the original U.N. resolution not enforced? Much of it had to do with Cold War politics. U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in 1978 that since the Communists were backing the Timorese, the United States had to side with Indonesia. "The Department of State desired that the United Nations proved utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success," Moynihan said.

To round the circle, Richard Holbrooke, who has now assumed Moynihan's old position at the United Nations, was the desk officer in the State Department in 1978. Holbrooke's responsibility was to cover for Indonesia as it massacred one-third of the Timorese population during its anti-secessionist campaign.

Of course, it is not so easy to simply walk in the face of an occupying army thousands of miles from any secure base. Even Robin Cook, British foreign secretary and Kosovo hawk, is being cautious, on the very practical grounds that it is much easier to intervene with Indonesian support than it would be to go against the 23,000 Indonesian troops there. He does hint, nonetheless, that Indonesian failure to cooperate might change that policy.

The Indonesians themselves seem to have taken tutorials from Slobodan Milosevic in how to deal with an irresolute world community: Outright Goebbelsian lies, evasions and occasional statements of moderation until the fever heat of world indignation dies down enough to start all over again.

And what about Washington? There, of course, it's déjà vu all over again. Repeating every messy mistake of the last decade in the Balkans, every Cabinet official seems to be to busy telling the Indonesians what the U.S. will not do: The U.S. will not send troops, says Defense Secretary Bill Cohen, because it is not the world's policeman. The White House announces that it will stop military aid -- of $700,000 -- but seems to hint that continued arms sales are fine. U.S. officials prevaricate, but suggest that it would in some way be precipitate to stop the IMF loan that Jakarta desperately needs.

Current American policy toward Indonesia seems to be predicated on a belief that Habibie is losing control of his country. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, admitting that Clinton had not bothered phoning Habibie, says that "we have focussed on where we believe the decisions are being made, which is the Indonesian military." It is hardly surprising that the Indonesian military, after a quarter of a century of collusion and complicity from the Pentagon and the State Department, seems to think that it can still get away with mass murder.

• View blog reactions