Gusmao seeks closer military ties with Indonesia
Gusmao seeks closer military ties with Indonesia
Agence France-Presse, Singapore
East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao said here on Tuesday his nation's armed forces were looking to build closer ties with their former adversaries, the Indonesian military.
Gusmao, speaking to reporters after addressing a business lunch in Singapore, repeated an offer he said he made to Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri when they met in Malaysia seven months ago.
"I had a very good opportunity to talk with President Megawati and I told her we can have in the future military cooperation," Gusmao, who for nearly 17 years led East Timor's guerrilla struggle against Indonesia's rule in his territory.
"We are not establishing an army to fight with each other again.
"Indonesia is our closest neighbor. It is why we can have more cooperation, even in military terms."
But Gusmao, who was caught and thrown into an Indonesian jail in 1992 before being released ahead of his nation's vote for independence in 1999, emphasized cooperation would not begin immediately.
"Not now, of course, but we have a perspective to cooperate in the future."
Despite his status as a revolutionary hero, Gusmao has consistently pursued reconciliation and friendship with Indonesia.
The Indonesian military was the main security force during Indonesia's repressive occupation of East Timor between 1975 and 1999.
Militias armed and organized by the Indonesian military carried out a campaign of terror in 1999 to coincide with the territory's vote for independence in which at least 1,000 people were killed.
More than 200,000 people were also forced across the border into West Timor as the militias pursued a scorched earth policy that destroyed much of East Timor's urban infrastructure.
Prosecutors in East Timor have charged 350 people, including top Indonesian officers, over the 1999 atrocities but 263 of them remain at large in Indonesia.
In another development, prosecutors in East Timor on Tuesday charged 17 former militiamen or soldiers with murderous attacks on independence supporters and other civilians after the territory voted in August 1999 to break away from Indonesia.
The United Nations-funded Serious Crimes Unit accused soldiers with the Indonesian army and pro-Jakarta militiamen of systematically attacking civilians, destroying villages, forcing people into Indonesian West Timor and targeting and killing independence supporters.
Three indictments filed at Dili District Court accuse the former deputy commander of the Sakunar militia, Laurentino Soares alias "Moko"; three East Timorese soldiers in the Indonesian military; and 13 former Sakunar militia members.
Jakarta, which refuses to hand anyone over to East Timor prosecutors, conducted its own rights trials over the 1999 slaughter but these were widely seen by international observers as a whitewash.