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.