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.