RI-Timor Leste frontier not impregnable : mily border guard chief

"There are many, many obscure back-country routes foreigners can take to go to or come from the neighoring country. Moreover, they know the region well. Most border-crossings are done at night , and we are short of night-vision binoculars," he said here Monday.

The border the troops had to guard was 239 km long 150 km of which lay in Belu district and the rest in Kupang and Timor Timur Utara districts which adjoined Timor Leste`s Oekusi enclave.

Kusdaryono made the statements when asked about reports that a number of Timor Leste men belonging to the rebel group led by Alfredo Reinado Alves had entered Indonesian terrritory in Belu district illegally not long ago.

"Supposing all my men are made to line up along the entire border, illegal border crossers can still get through both ways. This is not because we do not do our job properly but because we just don`t have enough tools and infrastructure and other inter-related things," he said.

Still, he said, the task force he was commanding never relaxed its alertness and was constantly on guard. "We always observe close coordination and try to perfect our ways of carrying out the border guarding precedures," he said.

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