E. Timor's Xanana Gusmao wary of UN and World Bank
E. Timor's Xanana Gusmao wary of UN and World Bank
BAUCAU, East Timor (Reuters): East Timorese independence hero Xanana Gusmao fears the World Bank and the United Nations are pushing their own agenda in East Timor and are not listening to the people of the devastated territory.
In an interview with Reuters, Gusmao hit out at UN efforts to disarm the pro-independence Falintil guerrillas he commands. "The UN has to recognize that the UN is not the savior," said Gusmao, widely expected to become the first president of an independent East Timor.
"We want to make clear Falintil is the liberation army and that they have to respect our history and our struggle," he told Reuters late on Monday in East Timor's second city, Baucau.
The future role of Falintil, which fought against Indonesia's rule of East Timor since its invasion in 1975, is one of the key issues the international community has yet to resolve.
The UN-mandated multinational force in East Timor has made it clear it wants to see the fighters disarmed.
Transforming the guerrillas into a civilian police force for East Timor is among the possibilities being discussed, but Gusmao was dismissive of this option.
"We see the need for a police force but it doesn't mean that Falintil has to be disarmed and become a police force," he said.
Gusmao returned to East Timor last month after seven years of imprisonment and exile.
The former Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly for independence in a UN-supervised ballot in August, setting off a campaign of violence and destruction by pro-Jakarta militiamen and the Indonesian military.
A UN-backed force was sent to the territory to restore order, and a UN transitional authority will run East Timor until it becomes independent.
Meanwhile, a senior East Timorese pro-independence leader on Tuesday said the UN-backed international force in the territory was as bad as the Indonesian army after his house was raided for a third time.
"This is exactly the same as the TNI (Indonesian army) over the last 24 years," Leandro Isaac, a leading member of the National Council for Timorese Resistance (CNRT), told Reuters.
Isaac, the most senior East Timorese leader after Xanana Gusmao, said his house had been raided three times, the latest on Monday, by international troops who arrived in armored personnel carriers.
He said that the deputy head of the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET) had come to his house on Monday night to apologize, but he refused to accept it.
"That kind of apology has no meaning," he said. "I'm sorry to say that I have had those kinds of apologies from TNI for the last 24 years."
The World Bank has sent a team to East Timor to assess its needs. Gusmao said the Bank was at times trying to impose its own views on how the ravaged territory should be rebuilt.
"In some areas there are conflicts or some different points of view but I believe that we, the East Timorese, have a responsibility to defend our interests in this mission," he said. "But we cannot expect to get everything we want and I can accept that."
The World Bank is heading an assessment mission of 20 international experts -- in areas such as health, infrastructure and community development -- along with 20 East Timorese.
The Bank has defended its mission against Timorese criticism. "This mission was put together jointly by the East Timorese side, and the members of the mission on the East Timorese side were nominated by Xanana Gusmao," deputy mission leader Sara Cliffe told reporters in Dili on Tuesday.
Gusmao said he would discuss the issue of thousands of East Timorese still in Indonesian West Timor with newly elected President Abdurrahman Wahid and his deputy Megawati Sukarnoputri when he visits Jakarta later this month.
"I believe that the new democratic government can be more positive in solving problems like this," he said.
Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese remain trapped in West Timor, and the UN says militia violence and intimidation have hampered attempts to return them to their homeland.