End of an episode

East Timorese independence leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao could not have put it better. Paying a brief visit to see off the last Indonesian Military (TNI) contingent in East Timor as the soldiers were making preparations for their flight home from Dili airport during the weekend, Xanana clasped hands with the Indonesian officers and bid them farewell.

"This ends an historical error. A mistake between two countries. Now we have to look at the future," the East Timorese leader said.

A number of inferences can be drawn from Xanana's words. In the first place, of course, they conveyed the kind of wisdom and statesmanship that the East Timorese will need from the man who is expected to become their first president. The East Timorese can consider themselves fortunate to have this kind of leader at a time when they are poised to embark on the arduous road of full independence in the not-so-distant future.

No less fortunate -- for both East Timor and Indonesia -- a similarly enlightened and democratic leadership exists in Jakarta at this crucial point in history. Last week, in his first official remarks to the press, President Abdurrahman Wahid made it known that he and Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri would personally welcome Xanana at the airport should the East Timorese leader go ahead with his reported plan to visit Jakarta. This, the President said, would serve as a signal that Indonesia was serious in its resolve to honor international law to the fullest.

Secondly, Xanana's parting gesture and words aptly portrayed the predicament which the drawn-out East Timor conflict has posed for both Indonesia and East Timor.

Painful as the loss of the former Portuguese colony may be for many Indonesians -- at least 5,000 Indonesian soldiers are reported to have lost their lives in the conflict, not to mention an estimated 200,000 East Timorese fighters and civilians -- the 24-year-long conflict can only be appropriately called a historical error, given the sacrifices that have been made on both sides and the international complications which the problem has caused for Jakarta.

Hopefully, those problems will end with East Timor's transition from a reluctant Indonesian province into an independent state -- a transition which after Saturday's departure of the last Indonesian military contingent in Dili formally starts. And, having arrived at this point in their respective histories, the only sensible thing for both Indonesians and East Timorese to do obviously is, as Xanana said, to look to the future. In that future, both Indonesia and independent East Timor as well as the Asia-Pacific region as a whole can only stand to benefit from maintaining good relations between the two.

Naturally, it will take time and effort for the wounds to heal. But with the kind of wise and democratic leadership that now exists in Jakarta -- and hopefully in the near future also in Dili -- there is every reason to believe that such a rapprochement is possible.

For Indonesia, the whole East Timor episode can serve as a valuable lesson in how popular resistance movements should not be handled. Indonesia's fatal mistake in East Timor was that during all of its 24-year-long presence in the territory it failed to win the hearts and minds of the East Timorese people.

The pain that many Indonesians surely feel at the loss of East Timor is easy enough to understand. But, now that they have come to this final stage of the drama, all that can be said is that, hopefully, the lesson is one well learned.