EAST TIMOR – All Eyes On Auckland – Military Assets – Indonesia’s Military – Student Fears – Editorial ---- OTHER NEWS – PM At APEC – Suicide – Industrial Relations – Scott Watson Trial – Russian Sought

EAST TIMOR - ALL EYES ON AUCKLAND: World leaders converging on Auckland for Apec meetings this week will be pressed for possible armed intervention in East Timor as management of the crisis moves New Zealand to centre stage. Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, who yesterday invited non-Apec powers to join the crisis meeting, will seek a clear United States response to the emergency when she speaks to President Bill Clinton this morning.

EAST TIMOR - MILITARY ASSETS AT APEC: Providing security for Apec ministers and leaders while they talk about East Timor is delaying New Zealand's ability to respond to the crisis there. "We currently have a force of around 350 which will be on 14 days' notice immediately after the Apec conference is completed, and that's because many of those same people are involved in the Apec conference in a variety of roles," Defence Minister Max Bradford said yesterday.

EAST TIMOR - INDONESIA’S MILITARY: At first glance, Indonesia's armed forces would make any country think twice about sending peacekeeping troops into East Timor. Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie can in theory call on 476,000 active forces - including 235,000 in the Army, 43,000 in the Navy, 21,000 in the Air Force and 177,000 police.

EAST TIMOR - STUDENT FEARS: Aurelio Guterres was talking on the phone to his mother in Dili when she suddenly had to flee for her life. "She said, 'Pray for us. We are leaving now because the house is burning'," recalled the 32-year-old spokesman for the East Timor Students Association in New Zealand.

EAST TIMOR - EDITORIAL: Suddenly New Zealand finds itself hosting more than a trade summit. The humanitarian emergency in East Timor could hardly be sidelined for the sake of running a trade meeting to plan - important though that is. People are being terrorised, displaced and many are dying in the disorder of East Timor since the declaration of the referendum result. It is not a calamity that has erupted from obscure causes in a hitherto unnoticed part of the world; this is a completely predictable disaster to which neigh-bouring countries and the United Nations have contributed. They must act quickly.

PM AT APEC: The most arduous week in the political career of Jennifer Mary Shipley begins this morning when she books into her suite at the Carlton Hotel in Auckland. Her colleagues agree Apec is her toughest test. Knifing Jim Bolger was easy given the caucus sentiment behind her; sacking the impossible Winston Peters was courageous, but necessary.

SUICIDE: One New Zealander commits suicide every 16 hours on average - about 540 a year - and researchers say the rate among males is as bad as in the Great Depression. An Auckland School of Medicine study found there was a suicide every three days in Greater Auckland from 1989 to 1997.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Labour would allow multi-employer strikes - illegal under the Employment Contracts Act, which permits strikes for every other type of contract. Labour released its industrial relations policy yesterday, after weeks of Government attacks claiming that it would return New Zealand to union hands

SCOTT WATSON TRIAL:The bodies of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart may have been trussed up in sleeping bags and dragged behind Scott Watson's boat before being dumped deep at sea, the Crown claims. Watson might have gouged holes in his mattress to remove blood or semen, prosecutor Paul Davison, QC, told the jury on the second day of his closing address yesterday.

RUSSIAN SOUGHT: Auckland police hope a man they want to interview in connection with the murder of Japanese tourist Kayo Matsuzawa a year ago will trigger an airport alert if he tries to cross another border. The man - a Russian who earned the nickname KGB at the Auckland backpackers' hostel where Miss Matsuzawa stayed - left the country the day after her body was discovered, and has yet to be spoken to by police.

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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