| Subject: Wahid &
Megawati to personally welcome Gusmao at airport Irish Times [Dublin] Wednesday, October 27, 1999
Gusmao invited to Jakarta
The move heralds a fresh start in relations between East
Timor and Indonesia, Conor O'Clery reports from Dili.
EAST TIMOR: Just seven weeks after being released from
house arrest in Jakarta, the East Timor resistance leader, Mr Xanana Gusmao, has been
invited to return to the Indonesian capital as the president-in-waiting of an independent
East Timor.
Indonesia's new president, Mr Abdurrahman Wahid, announced
the initiative yesterday, heralding a fresh start in relations between East Timor and the
country which occupied and oppressed the former Portuguese colony for the last 24 years.
President Wahid said he and the Vice-President, Ms Megawati
Sukarnoputri, would meet Mr Gusmao at the airport to welcome him personally.
He gave the news after naming a new reformist cabinet,
which sidelined the armed forces chief, Gen Wiranto, and removed from office the Foreign
Minister, Mr Ali Alatas, who spent most of the Suharto years defending Indonesia's 1976
annexation of East Timor.
Mr Wahid, who said that it was essential for Indonesia to
remain on good terms with an independent East Timor, did not reveal when the meeting would
take place. High on Mr Gusmao's agenda will be the fate of thousands of East Timor
refugees forcibly deported by militias to West Timor and other parts of Indonesia after
East Timor voted for independence on August 30th.
The Indonesian president also yesterday formally notified
the UN that Indonesia recognised the outcome of the poll and had relinquished its claims
on the territory it invaded in 1975. The last 1,000 Indonesian troops and police will be
withdrawn shortly from East Timor, which since September 20th has come under the control
of the Australian-led international force (Interfet).
Col Sahala Skalahi of the Indonesian army told reporters in
Dili: "As soon as I get the order I will leave quickly. It would take me only a
couple of days."
Mr Gusmao was captured and jailed in 1992 for leading armed
resistance to Indonesian rule. He returned to Dili last week to a hero's welcome. As
commander of the Falintil (Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor)
guerrilla movement, Mr Gusmao is heir apparent to the top civilian leadership post.
In the meantime, however, he will be merely a consultant to
an interim United Nations authority which effectively came into being on Monday at the UN
and will run East Timor for a two-to-three year period.
This results from a unanimous UN Security Council vote on
Monday to set up an interim administration to run everything from the government to the
courts in the shattered country, and to provide a peacekeeping force of nearly 11,000
troops and police. Announcing what he called a "crucial stage in the lives of the
people of East Timor", the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi An nan, appointed Mr Sergio
Vieira de Mello (51), the Brazilian UN undersecretary-general for huma nitarian affairs,
as his special representative in overall change of East Timor. He is expected to arrive in
East Timor around November 7th.
The mission is one of the largest and costliest the UN has
ever undertaken, with the total expenditure expected to be between $700,000,000 and $1
billion for the first year, according to Mr Bernard Miyet, the UN secretarygeneral for
peacekeeping. It aims to rebuild East Timor's institutions from scratch.
The UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, or
UNTAET, is expected to take over security from Interfet by January. UNTAET will comprise
8,950 troops, 200 military observers, 1,640 police officers and possibly 1,500 civilian
officials.
Many contingents from the current military operation, which
includes 30 Irish Army Rangers, will don blue berets and join the peacekeeping force, but
with the UN rather than contributing countries paying the bills.
Today in Darwin, North Australia, a delegation from the
World Bank will meet an East Timorese group led by Mr Mario Carrascalao, a former governor
of East Timor under Indonesian rule, to evaluate the cost of rebuilding East Timor and to
assess the humanitarian needs of the territory's estimated 850,000 people, including some
250,000 refugees that have not yet returned home.
East Timor was laid waste by the Indonesian military and
proJakarta militias in the days after the referendum when nearly 80 per cent of voters
opted for independence from Jakarta.
Jakarta Post October 26, 1999
President to meet Xanana
JAKARTA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid has planned to
hold a meeting next month with East Timor independence leader Jose Alexandre
"Xanana" Gusmao, possibly in Brunei or another neutral Southeast Asian country,
his aide said on Monday.
Muladi, the state secretary in the former government of
B.J. Habibie, said the meeting would take place during the President's lengthy working
visits to nine Asian capitals.
"It will be an informal meeting which hopefully will
bear fruit," Muladi, who is helping President Abdurrahman settle in his new office,
said.
Xanana, who spent seven years in a Jakarta jail until his
release last month, was chosen because he was known to be a moderate figure who would
likely become the new East Timor leader, he said.
Muladi said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was drafting a
letter notifying the United Nations of the decision by the People's Consultative Assembly
this month to endorse the result of the Aug. 30 ballot in East Timor.
In the UN-supervised ballot, East Timorese overwhelmingly
voted against the option for wide-ranging autonomy within Indonesia.
Muladi said once the letter was signed by the President and
delivered to the United Nations, Indonesia would effectively hand over East Timor to the
world body."There is no need for any ceremony," he said. (prb/emb)
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