“Army build-up not needed’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33928, 22 August 1975, Page 9

“Army build-up not needed’

(Neu) Zealand Press Association—Copyright) JAKARTA, August 21. Indonesia believes there is no need for a military build-up along its border with Portuguese Timor, where factional fighting has been reported, according to the Minister of Defence (General Maraden Panggabean).

“There is no need for the Army to march there,” General Panggabean said. But he said Jakarta would act if developments in Portuguese Timor harmed security in Indonesia.

“We will face anybody who touches our territory,” he added. He said Indonesia followed developments in Portuguese Timor in the hope decolonisation could be carried out. Indonesia wanted to see no side “restricted, repressed and bridled in the decolonisation process,” he said.

“We know that in Portuguese Timor there is a group which wants to join Indonesia and Indonesia is always open‘CIVIL WAR’

Portuguese authorities in Dili, the capital of Portuguese Timor, said today that civil war was raging and decvlared that the situation could be brought under control only by' international intervention.

Many people had been killed or wounded, said an official communique, appealing for a ship to take out 1400 refugees.

ing the possibility through sensible processes,” he said.

Authoritative sources in Canberra said tonight that the struggle for control of Portuguese Timor had now erupted into heavy fighting in Dili and rural, mountainous areas of the colony. Reports of continuing heavy fighting among members of the Timor Democratic Union (U.D.T.) and the rival Radical Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, (Fretilin) said casualties were heavy and many villages had been destroyed.

•The U.D.T., which seized key installations in Dili 11 days ago in a bid to establish an independent antiCommunist administration, was reported to be still in control of key points in the colony’s two main cities, Dili and Bacau.

Fretilin, a radical Left-wing party which has demanded immediate independence for the colony, was reported to have gained a minor grip in some areas of Dili and major control in mountain areas where large-scale fighting had occurred.