Word: timorous
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...major international war now, a number of minor and civil conflicts are disturbing the peace. British and Icelandic gunboats are standing by to defend disputed cod fishing rights in the North Atlantic. Lebanon and Angola seethe with civil war. Indonesia presses its offensive against the Portuguese colony of East Timor. Argentina is plagued with terrorism. The occasions, technology and stratagems of war continue to multiply; the rudiments of peacemaking, this Christmas as ever, remain elusive...
Just before dawn, seven Indonesian warships knifed into the waters off Dili, a faded coffee port that serves as the capital of the Portuguese colony of East Timor. Minutes later the ships' guns lit up the night sky. Indonesian marines with full packs and battle dress charged ashore from assault boats, while planes arced overhead dropping paratroopers. Within a few hours it was all over but the mopping up-and that apparently was bloody. Ham radio operators 400 miles away in Australia picked up the last faint pleas from a lone transmitter: "Women and children are being shot...
Thus was one more remnant of Portugal's colonial empire lost last week. East Timor is a mountainous patch of jungle and coffee plantations on the eastern half of the 300-mile-long island of Timor; the other half is part of Indonesia. The Indonesian invasion at least resolved a dilemma for East Timor's 650,000 inhabitants, who had been faced with one of three political fates: continued association with Portugal leading to gradual independence, immediate independence or integration with Indonesia. The generals in Jakarta decided on integration, evidently because they feared that if independence were chosen...
...Portuguese Timor (pop. 650,000) in the Indonesian archipelago, the colonial government radioed that "many dead bodies are lying in the streets" of its capital of Dili. Other reports told of barrages of mortar shells and a continuous small-arms crossfire. Fighting broke out when the Timorese Democratic Union (U.D.T.) seized power two weeks ago to forestall what it said was a coup attempt by the radical Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretelin). At least 100 persons died in the initial outburst, and the toll was expected to go much higher. Lisbon was said to be sending...
Portuguese authorities on Macao, the country's other remaining Pacific possession, declared that Lisbon's troops would not "open fire against the people of Timor no matter what the outcome of the current crisis." Similarly, Indonesia announced a policy of noninterference. The main danger seemed to be that the three independence parties would begin to bicker among themselves, à la Angola...