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BANGKOK, July 29 (AFP) - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed concern Saturday over the problems facing Indonesia and said that the United States would consider helping to defuse the conflict in the Maluku islands. "The list of challenges now confronting Indonesia is daunting and long," she said after a meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab. "These include economic restructuring, regional conflicts and sectarian violence, and most notably that in the Malukus." Albright said Shihab told her it was critical to remove the "troublemakers" responsible for stirring up unrest in the Malukus, where 18 months of Muslim-Christian bloodshed has left some 4,000 people dead. "We said we would look at how the international community could be of assistance," she said after the talks, held on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting here. Indonesia's military is planning to deport thousands of "jihad force" Muslims - brought to the Malukus after being given intensive combat training - who have been accused of masterminding attacks on Christians. At the United Nations late Friday, a senior member of the U.S. delegation Ambassador Nancy Soderberg urged Indonesia to act before the situation collapsed into genocide. "Muslims are killing Christians, Christians are killing Muslims," she told the United Nations Security Council. "The international community must speak out against this violence." Albright did not say what form the international community's assistance to the Malukus might take, but Shihab said she had offered to provide help that was "not military-based". "We discussed the possibility of extending helping hands and this is very broad. As long as it's a positive humanitarian assistance in terms of logistics, sustenance and so forth, it's always open," he said. Shihab said that while Albright was not completely happy with Indonesia's handling of the Malukus crisis, the U.S. had no intention of intervening. "They are satisfied at this moment - although not 100 percent - with the measures taken by the Indonesian leadership to resolve the Maluku problem and hope it will be overcome soon." Albright said that despite all the problems, the U.S. was "cognizant of the distance Indonesia has already come and is committed to helping its people overcome their difficulties as it proceeds further down the democratic path." "I reaffirmed America's support for reform, our full commitment to Indonesia's territorial integrity and our backing for efforts to end the fighting." On East Timor, she joined calls for Jakarta to clamp down on the anti-independence militias who are using refugee camps in Indonesian West Timor as a base for incursions into the territory, which voted to separate from Indonesia last year. A New Zealand soldier in the UN peacekeeping force was killed this week by one of the armed gangs. The two discussed "the ongoing problems in Timor including the need to resolve the refugee issues and disband the militias that threaten both the people of East Timor and the international peacekeeping force," she said. Shihab said that he hoped the camps would be closed within the next two or three months. "According to the current statistics, there are 60 percent or about half of them who want to return to East Timor ... the rest we will have to arrange where to relocate them," he said. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Shihab told him in a bilateral meeting Saturday that Indonesia would do its utmost to bring the militias under control. "They are committed to disarming the militias and arresting those responsible for the death of the New Zealander ... the question is whether they have the capacity to do it," he told a news briefing. Shihab said that Albright apologized for not being able to visit Indonesia before the ASEAN meeting as planned, and promised to make the trip in September or October. |
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