Indonesia's national assembly is expected today to officially recognise East Timor's vote for independence and declare null and void a 1978 decree annexing the territory, members said.
A commission comprising all 11 factions in the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), Indonesia's supreme legislative body, agreed late last night to send the draft decree on East Timor to a plenary session today.
The decree will recognise the results of the August 30th referendum in which East Timorese voted almost four to one to break away from Indonesia. It will also declare "invalid" the incorporation of East Timor into Indonesia, assemblymen said.
Meanwhile the chief-of-staff of the Indonesian armed forces, Gen Wiranto, said yesterday he was declining to stand as vice-president with President B.J. Habibie. "I would rather concentrate on security issues," Gen Wiranto said in a speech broadcast on the RCTI private television station.
The unexpected decision came just two days before Indonesia's presidential election.
Mr Habibie last week chose Gen Wiranto as his running mate in the elections, but the general said yesterday: "I haven't been contacted by anyone so far, including . . . [Mr Habibie's] Golkar party.
"I will assume whatever political position is open for me if the people really need it," Gen Wiranto said.
The MPR, which will choose the new president and vice-president tomorrow, has widely criticised Mr Habibie's performance during his 17 months in power.
More than 41,000 policemen and soldiers were mobilised across the city and rallies were banned at a major roundabout. About 1,500 supporters of the opposition presidential hopeful, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, defied the ban yesterday while white-collar workers staged an anti-Habibie rally outside the stock exchange.
Mr Habibie's main challengers are Ms Megawati (53), a daughter of Indonesia's founding President Sukarno, and the moderate Muslim leader, Mr Abdurrahman Wahid (59).
David Shanks adds:
Mr Xanana Gusmao, the likely future president of an independent East Timor, has said in Australia that Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militias had massacred 50 people over the weekend in the isolated enclave of Oecussi, according to a report he had received from the second in command of his guerrilla army, FALINTIL.
The information from Oecussi, a part of East Timor in Indonesian West Timor where recent other massacres are believed to have have gone unreported, was "credible", he said. The international force, Interfet, has no troops in Oecussi, although its UN mandate covers the enclave.