E. Timor leaders make landmark visit to Indonesia
E. Timor leaders make landmark visit to Indonesia
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP): East Timor's independence leader
Xanana Gusmao and foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta arrived
Tuesday for their first meeting with Indonesian President
Megawati Soekarnoputri.
During the two-day visit, the delegation, which includes East
Timor's UN administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello, will discuss
forging closer economic links and improving border security.
They will meet Megawati on Wednesday, a presidential spokesman
said. There will also be separate talks with several Cabinet
ministers.
"We expect a lot. This is our first meeting with President
Megawati," said de Mello. "We have an agenda that is not new but
needs to be reactivated at the highest level."
The former Indonesian province, which the United Nations is
governing during its transition to independence, held its first
national elections on Aug. 30, exactly two years after the UN-
supervised independence referendum in 1999.
Megawati, who assumed office in July, has only recently
recognized its right to secede from Indonesia.
The results of the plebiscite sparked an orgy of killing,
burning and looting by the Indonesian army and anti-independence
militias. Hundreds of people died, many of them hacked to death
by the paramilitaries.
Abdurrahman Wahid, who became Indonesia's president shortly
after the violence, frequently met with Gusmao, Horta, and de
Mello, both in Jakarta and in East Timor. But Megawati - who had
urged the East Timorese to remain part of Indonesia in 1999 by
saying they would not be able to call her "mother" if they opted
to secede - shunned any contacts with UN officials or
representatives of the fledgling nation.
UN officials said Megawati, who served as vice president
during Wahid's 21-month administration, rebuffed their requests
for meetings on six separate occasions.
Both Horta and Gusmao, who is expected to become East Timor's
first president, have stressed the need to improve economic and
political ties with Indonesia as a way of neutralizing the anti-
independence militias still active in refugee camps in the
western, Indonesian-held half of Timor island.
Despite opposition from East Timor's largest political party,
the two men have indicated they were willing to forgive the
destruction caused by Indonesian forces, and would not seek
reparations payments from Jakarta.
Some 50,000 East Timorese refugees are still being held in the
camps in West Timor, unable to return because of intimidation by
militia thugs. The paramilitaries last year murdered three UN aid
workers, forcing international agencies to pull out of West Timor
and end repatriation efforts.
Human rights activists have expressed concern that Megawati's
close ties with Indonesian military commanders accused of human
rights abuses in East Timor could hamper a war crimes tribunal.