'It will be hell' if the monsoon wins says Kiwi UN aid worker

DILI- Ross Mountain works with one eye on the sky.

Within the next three or four weeks great clouds will drive above the hills behind his compound and open in a deluge that will cloak it for the long month of the monsoon.

In those few weeks Mr Mountain, the New Zealander coordinating humanitarian aid in the devastated province, must somehow entice hundreds of thousands of people out of hiding, accommodate them in solid homes and get crops of rice and maize in the ground.

Failure will mean further untold misery for Timorese and aid workers: a life of constant monsoon drenching which will bog down the movement of people and machines, the collapse of what rudimentary sanitation exists and the deadly rise of water-borne disease.

"It will be hell," says Mr Mountain, a soft-spoken development specialist from Christchurch who heads the United Nations' Geneva-based Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Relief workers are already nudging the lines established by the UN's Interfet forces, pushing the limits of safety and setting up bases hard on the heels of the soldiers.

Mr Mountain, who has dodged bullets in Liberia, Afghanistan and Lebanon - "mercifully, their aim has not been that good" - accepts the dangers of an island in which armed militiamen still roam and are reportedly forming a guerrilla army in Indonesian West Timor.

"We on the humanitarian side are prepared to push the envelope," he said.

"We very much appreciate the support we're getting from Interfet but we do not insist they have a presence in an area before we get out there and operate.

"We do everything we can to minimise the risk to our colleagues but we do realise that time isn't always on our side."

That is probably an understatement.

Of East Timor's pre-terror population of about 850,000, only about 70,000 have returned to the main cities of Dili and Baucau, and an estimated 250,000 are living in West Timor, either in one of 70 refugee camps or in hiding in the hills.

More than 500,000 remain unaccounted for, probably too afraid to go back to towns and villages razed by the militias.

Fewer than 100 have been seen by soldiers pushing south along the border from the towns of Batugade and Balibuo.

Mr Mountain doubts suggestions of mass slaughter - "you have no idea of how many satellite phones there are, and in places you would be surprised" - and believes far more people than estimated may have fled to the west.

Part of his job is to locate East Timorese in the west and to negotiate with Indonesia to bring them home from conditions aid workers have described as appalling and subject to continued militia control.

Mr Mountain has already discussed reparation with senior Indonesian minister Dr Haryono Suyono, who indicated Jakarta's intention to help East Timorese to return and to allow the OCHA access to refugee camps.

Although progress has been slow, the first plane-load of refugees is scheduled to fly to Dili on Friday in what is hoped will become the start of an increasing flow back east.

Mr Mountain said some would not want to come back and would need continued help from the OCHA.

"We are not concerned with their politics. We're concerned about the protection and support of Timorese who voted for autonomy and who may not wish to return to East Timor."

Mr Mountain said he hoped most would return home, but any choice had to be voluntary.