Annan Exerts Pressure on Indonesia to Accept Peacekeepers in E. Timor : Asia: Anti-independence militias loot U.N. compound in province, threaten staff and refugees.

JAKARTA, Indonesia —  After armed militias in East Timor threatened to invade a U.N. compound where hundreds of refugees had sought asylum, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday intensified pressure on Indonesia to accept international peacekeepers in the violence-torn province.

Militiamen opposed to independence for the Indonesian province looted parts of the compound and fired weapons into the air, damaging vehicles and threatening refugees and a skeleton crew of 80 U.N. staff members Friday, journalists and U.N. workers in the compound reported.

Indonesian soldiers responsible for protecting the compound in Dili, the territory’s capital, from which the U.N. evacuated hundreds of its workers and dependents early in the day, stood by and sometimes even helped the militiamen, the workers and journalists said.

Annan, in his strongest statement yet, condemned the ongoing violence in the province and criticized the government of Indonesian President B. J. Habibie for failing to restore order.

Despite its promises, the Habibie regime has failed to stop the militias’ “orgy of looting, burning and killing” since the province’s residents voted by an overwhelming majority Aug. 30 in favor of independence from Indonesia, he said.

“So far, they have been either unable or unwilling to take effective steps to restore security,” Annan said Friday at a news conference in New York.

An international force led by Australian troops is standing by to help protect hundreds of thousands of East Timorese who are being harassed by the armed militias, which many observers say were created and are controlled by elements of the Indonesian military.

France has sent a warship to the waters off Indonesia, and Italy said Friday that it is prepared to join a peacekeeping force. But United Nations officials have indicated that international peacekeepers will not be deployed to East Timor without the consent of Indonesia, which seized the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

Gen. Wiranto, the chief of Indonesia’s armed forces, said Friday that he was willing to discuss deploying an international peacekeeping force in the troubled province. But he made it clear that such a force would not be accepted by Indonesia any time soon.

“We are having a very emotional reaction to the ballot,” he told reporters in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. He added that the imposition Tuesday of martial law in the province was “working well” and that “security is getting better.”

A five-member U.N. Security Council delegation was due in Dili today, accompanied by Wiranto, to assess the situation. The group spent three days here in the capital talking to officials and is due to report its findings to Annan in New York next week.

The Security Council will hold a special open session today so U.N. members can send a strong message of condemnation to Jakarta, but the council probably will not consider action until it receives the mission’s report early next week.

“Nobody in his wildest dreams thought that what we are witnessing could have happened,” Annan said Friday. “We knew there were security problems, but not the carnage and chaos we have seen, with the military and police totally unable or incapable of doing anything.”

The armed militias were active before the Aug. 30 vote but have turned particularly violent since election results were announced a week ago. Dili has been looted, burned and all but deserted except for the roving bands of gunmen. Outlying villages reportedly have been devastated, though an accurate assessment of damage and deaths has been difficult because most U.N. workers, outside observers and journalists have been driven from the province.

Tens of thousands of Timorese have fled into the mile-high mountains, while 82,000 more have been evacuated to neighboring West Timor province in military planes, ships and trucks.

Foreign Minister Ali Abdullah Alatas denounced as nonsense some reports that Indonesia was pursuing a Kosovo-style cleansing of independence supporters by moving them to West Timor.

“These people want to go to safer places, and we are helping them,” he told journalists Friday. If that is true, it remains unclear why thousands of refugees were evacuated at gunpoint.

Alatas acknowledged that Indonesia did not fully control its 20,000 police and soldiers in East Timor and that “rogue elements” of the army were operating there. These elements, diplomats believe, answer not to Wiranto but to renegade officers who have grown wealthy in East Timor and who think that it would sully the military’s honor to surrender a province the army shed blood to conquer.

The Vatican on Friday joined growing international demands that Jakarta end the violence and allow international peacekeepers into East Timor. It is essential, Pope John Paul II said, that Indonesia recognize the “legitimate aspirations of the Timorese people.”

New Zealand and the U.S. already have suspended military cooperation with Indonesia, and Australia and Britain are examining their defense ties. President Clinton has warned that the crisis in East Timor could prove disastrous for Indonesia’s economic recovery.

Despite Wiranto’s assurances that the violence in East Timor was being brought under control, Clinton on Friday strongly condemned the Indonesian military, saying it was clear that its forces were aiding the militias in the rampant violence.

“This is simply unacceptable,” Clinton said aboard Air Force One en route to New Zealand to attend a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

In addition to exerting pressure on Jakarta to request peacekeepers, the Clinton administration is conducting “a thorough review” of all bilateral relationships with Indonesia, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said aboard the president’s plane.

“Obviously, all of those will be on the table,” he said.

Lamb reported from Jakarta and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Auckland, New Zealand, contributed to this report.