E TIMOR REJECTS SCATHING UN REPORT

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By Claudette Werden for Radio Australia - 4 January 2010 - ABC NEWS

The East Timorese government has hit out at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) over a report that criticises it for failing to address rising poverty and joblessness.

The draft report acknowledges progress has been made since the country gained independence in 2002.

But it is also critical of the high level of unemployment among young people and rising rural poverty and questions the spending of profits from the Timor Sea oil and gas project.

East Timor's state secretary for security, Francisco de Costa Guterres, has told Radio Australia's Asia Pacific program the UNDP itself is not doing enough to help the government with the country's problems.

"The UN doesn't understand the condition of the country," he said.

"They have been living here for quite some time but they don't know what the government is doing, because many of them haven't visited the villages yet. They haven't visited the remote areas. They are all concentrated in Dili."

James Dunn, a former Australian consul to East Timor and a former adviser to the UN Mission in East Timor, says the government has a point.

"I think the UN should have focused on these long-term issues, whereas its main focus particularly when it set out was really to try and set up a government to get to independence as quickly as possible," he said.

"It really needed to be there longer and to plan for that, but the big problem was... the major donor nations really wanted this very expensive mission to end as quickly as possible because it was costing a lot.

"That was the first one, UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor). The other missions have been much smaller and their aims and their capacities much more modest."

War crimes

Mr Dunn says the government's biggest mistake was not to pursue the perpetrators of war crimes committed prior to independence and to return to Indonesia without charge a militia leader accused of being behind the 1999 massacre of more than 200 unarmed civilians seeking refuge in a church.

"The Timorese have stepped beyond their moral authority in saying it's finished, let's not talk about it," he said.

"Maybe they feel that way, and I understand why [prime minister] Xanana [Gusmao] feels that way, because it's about politics, it's about pragmatism.

"But as far as the UN is concerned, and as far as those concerned with stamping out crimes against humanity, it is a serious matter that has to be taken further."

Mr Guterres sees it differently, saying the UN does not understand the relationship between East Timor and Indonesia.

"People from somewhere else, they don't understand the culture, the complexity of the issue," he said.

"I suggest the UN people, they should be more objective. They should understand more about the country's culture before they talk.

"If they understand the complexity of the issue, they may not come up with some such a report."

The UNDP report is being reviewed and will be released later this year.
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