After Kosovo, the United Nations is preparing to take over another country and run it for a long time as a protectorate. As the full extent of the devastation in East Timor becomes known, so too has it become abundantly clear that the one-time Portuguese colony cannot hope to achieve nationhood without sustained international help over a period of years.
Ruled harshly from 1975 until last month by the Indonesian army, East Timor has been reduced to a wasteland. It has no police or courts. Indonesian civil servants, shopkeepers, schoolteachers and medical staff have all fled. Public buildings are in ruins. The food distribution system is non-existent. The telephone, electricity and water supplies are in danger of collapse. The roads are in an advanced state of disintegration. Almost everything of value, from cars to television sets, has been looted.
This has left the UN with no option but to take over full control of East Timor's defence and administration to guide the territory to independence. This is the proposition which the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, put on Tuesday to the UN Security Council, which is about to begin a debate which will focus on the likely cost of $1 billion.
Under his plan, East Timor will be run by foreigners for "two to three years". Mr Annan said he would appoint a civilian administration as soon as possible with authority to enact new laws and regulations and to amend, suspend or repeal existing ones.
His report recommends that the interim administration be protected by a United Nations peacekeeping force of up to 8,950 troops with "robust rules of engagement and a rapid reaction capability", along with 200 military observers, and 1,640 police. Civilian officials would be imported from all over the world to service what will be known as the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, or UNTAET, which would have East Timorese advisory bodies at all levels of government.
Mr Annan's proposal raises questions similar to those which arose in Kosovo after NATO occupation. What will be the role of East Timorese leaders returning to the country after exile, like Mr Xanana Gusmao? Will the armed resistance movement, Falintil, be required to decommission like the Kosovo Liberation Army? When should elections be held for an independent government? UN officials said these matters would be left to the new supremo of the UN administration, who will be known as the special representative of the secretary-general. The administration will also have to find out where all the people have gone and bring them back.
The blue-beret peacekeeping force, which may deploy as early as December, will take over from the Australia-led international force (Interfet) which entered East Timor on September 20th - not as a UN force but with the sanction of the UN - to end the campaign of arson, killings and forced population movement by the militias and Indonesian military. There are now 4,500 Interfet troops in East Timor, of which 3,500 are Australian, and this is due to rise to 7,500 in the coming weeks with the arrival of more national units, including 40 special forces Rangers from the Irish Army.
For political and practical reasons the number of Australians will be reduced in the new force, UN officials said. White Australia's dominance of Interfet has helped poison its relations with Indonesia and worried other member-states of ASEAN, the Association of South-East Asian Nations. The Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, yesterday expressed the hope that the blue berets would be on the ground by December, absorbing much of the Interfet force.
"It certainly is the view of the Australian government that we'd like to see the move to the fully-fledged United Nations peacekeeping force as soon as possible," he said.
Countries which sent contingents to Interfet have to meet their own costs, but after it becomes a UN peacekeeping operation the New York body will pay the bills, and this will be a strong encouragement to Asian countries to contribute. The funding of the East Timor operation could precipitate yet another financial crisis in the UN. The cost of the UN civil administration which ran post-civil war Cambodia from March 1992 for 18 months came to $1.66 billion. The US has yet to pay any of the $37.9 million start-up cost of the UN civilian operation in Kosovo which involves a 5,000-strong international police force. Isolated in the south-west pacific, East Timor will be expensive to rebuild.
Bishop Carlos Belo, the Catholic territory's spiritual leader, has called for a "Marshall Plan" to help revive his country.
The agreement in May involving the UN, Indonesia and Portugal which determined East Timor's future originally envisioned three stages in guiding the territory to independence. Firstly, a UN mission (UNAMET) would organise a referendum (this resulted on August 30th in 78.5 per cent of people voting for independence), the outcome would be ratified by the Indonesian parliament in October or November and the UN would gradually assume administrative and security duties and transfer them to the East Timorese. The destruction of East Timor by militias and the Indonesian army changed the equation, leading to the international force entering East Timor with Indonesia's reluctant agreement, and the rapid withdrawal of Indonesian troops.
Australia has not only borne the brunt of the East Timor mission so far, it has also had to cope with a crisis in its ties with Indonesia, as well as bitter divisions at home. The former Labour leader, Mr Paul Keating, stirred up a furious row this week by charging that the cause of Australia's "worst foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam War" had been a letter written by the Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, to President Habibie of Indonesia in February arguing for the act of self-determination.
"If John Howard had not written that letter . . . the Timor disaster would not have started to unfold," he said. "He wanted to be the independence-bringer to East Timor. All he has brought them is tears and grief."
The force of Mr Keating's remarks was diminished by the East Timorese Nobel prize winner, Mr Jose Ramos Horta, who described them as "nauseating". "How dare he criticise the only Prime Minister in Australia in 23 years, John Howard, who has had the courage to respond to the appeals, to the cries, of the people of East Timor?" he said.
Mr Howard accused Mr Keating of jeopardising the national interest. Mr Keating also criticised the "Howard doctrine", the policy outlined last week by the Prime Minister by which Australia would act as a US deputy in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr Howard has denied using the word "deputy".