Gusmao set to run for East Timor presidency

Gusmao set to run for East Timor presidency

DILI (AFP): East Timor independence leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao ended months of speculation on Saturday by announcing he will run for election as president of the fledgling country.

After long insisting that he did not want to be president after the former Indonesian territory gains full independence, Gusmao said he had relented with a heavy heart to universal demands for him to run.

"I declare here and now that I will accept to be nominated by the parties to the office of president of the Republic of Timor Lorosae," he told an audience of about 1,000 people in a packed Dili gymnasium.

The auditorium erupted into fervent cheers when Gusmao, seen by East Timorese as the hero of their campaign to end more than two decades of brutal Indonesian occupation, announced his candidacy.

The former guerrilla fighter said he would accept the nomination "if the same parties commit themselves to accepting the outcome of the (constituent assembly) elections" on August 30.

"This means that each party must promote... the policy of tolerance and mutual respect in the democratic spirit which we are all engaged in developing," Gusmao said.

"I am conscious that I am not the best person for the job," he added.

"It's true that I have begun to feel tired of a consequence of 25 years of heavy responsibility. I always nurtured the dream that after independence I would have time to cultivate pumpkins and breed animals."

East Timor, which is currently under United Nations administration, is expected to hold its first ever presidential election early next year after next week's constituent assembly poll.

The head of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), Sergio Vieira de Mello, hailed Gusmao's announcement as the "right decision at the right time".

"This is the right decision. We, myself in particular, have been encouraging Xanana to announce it as soon as possible," de Mello told AFP.

"This provides confidence to the population, removes the climate of uncertainty, which was prejudicial to the climate of stability and peace that we have attempted to establish in East Timor," he said.

East Timor's interim foreign minister and Nobel Peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta said he was "extremely pleased" with Gusmao's decision.

"Once again Xanana has shown his love and loyalty to his people," Ramos-Horta said, adding he would be "a great president of an independent East Timor".

"He wants a compassionate country, a country that is absolutely free of violence, he wants a country that does not forget the core or the handicap or the widows and he is totally incorruptible."

Gusmao, 55, made the long-awaited announcement in an emotional speech in Portuguese after conveying a message in the native Tetum language, urging calm and tolerance among the parties in the run-up to Thursday's poll, East Timor's first democratic election.

Gusmao, a former teacher and journalist, led the armed guerrilla struggle against the Indonesian occupation from 1981 until his capture in 1992. Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 after former colonial power Portugal had abandoned the territory.

Gusmao was taken to Jakarta and imprisoned until his release days after East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence in August 1999 in a UN-sponsored plebiscite.