East Timorese leaders to petition UN committee

JAKARTA (JP): Five prointegration East Timorese leaders will travel to New York to take part in a United Nations' meeting on decolonization next week, Antara reported yesterday.

Economist Domingos M. Policarpo dos Reis, one of the leaders, told the news agency that they would travel in their personal capacity to petition the "Committee 24" on behalf of those supporting East Timor's integration with Indonesia.

The meeting is scheduled for June 16 and June 17. The committee is a forum for non-governmental organizations that include a number of liberation movements. It is separate from the UN decolonization committee.

The four other East Timorese leaders going are activist Florentino C. Sarmento from the Etadep Foundation, Simao Assuncao from the East Timor provincial administration, Natercia, who will represent East Timorese women, and Octavio, a student at Gadjah Mada University who will represent young East Timorese.

Domingos reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about their planned trip yesterday.

East Timor is still on the UN decolonization committee's agenda, although Indonesia has succeeded in preventing the issue from being discussed at the General Assembly every year.

The assembly has agreed each year to defer debate on East Timor to let the UN secretary-general supervise talks between Indonesia and Portugal to settle the matter.

Indonesia says decolonization in East Timor was completed in 1976 when tribal leaders representing most of the population declared their intention to join the republic.

Indonesia also says that Portugal abandoned its colony of more than three centuries in 1975, neglecting its previous decolonization commitments.

Domingos said the East Timorese delegation planned to brief the committee on real conditions in East Timor and balance its information.

He said the committee had received one-sided information on the province which was detrimental to Indonesia.

Anti-integration leaders had always been active in UN committee meetings with the aim of discrediting Indonesia, he said.

"Realizing there was a need to ensure balanced information, the five of us, with assistance from the East Timor provincial administration, are going to the meeting to explain the real situation in the territory," he said.

He said there was a danger that failure to counter anti- integration propaganda could lead to a situation where "things that aren't true become true".

"This could happen because of the unbalanced information. One way to rectify this is to make it balance," said Domingos, a young graduate of the prestigious University of Indonesia's School of Economics. (emb)