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.