Gusmao to visit Jakarta, meet with Mega

Gusmao to visit Jakarta, meet with Mega

Agence France-Presse, Jakarta

East Timor's president-elect Xanana Gusmao will visit Jakarta on
Thursday during which he will seek an audience with President
Megawati Soekarnoputri, a UN official said.

Gusmao, who spent about seven years in jail during Indonesia's
24-year rule of East Timor, is scheduled to depart Dili at 7:00
a.m. on Thursday (5:00 a.m. Jakarta time), a staff member with
the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) said.

"Hopefully Mr. Gusmao will be able to meet with President
Megawati on Thursday or if not possible, on Friday," the staff
member told AFP by telephone from Dili.

She declined to give further details of Gusmao's schedule.

Megawati has expressed her intention to attend East Timor's
landmark independence handover next month despite strong
opposition from legislators.

She has been invited to the May 19-20 independence ceremonies
by East Timorese leaders and the United Nations, which has been
shepherding the impoverished territory to statehood since the
traumatic aftermath of its 1999 vote to break away from
Indonesia.

Some 15 heads of state are expected to attend the independence
handover which will mark the official birth of the first new
nation of the third millennium.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will declare the territory
independent in a lavish fireworks ceremony on the night of May 19
as the clock strikes midnight.

Gusmao, who led the guerrilla resistance to Indonesian rule,
will be sworn in by Annan just before midnight, following his
landslide election on April 14.

He said in an interview with the Tempo weekly this week that
he hoped Megawati could come for independence day and labeled her
presence in Dili "important for peace."

Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor
in 1975 and annexed it the following year.

Its often harsh rule in the following years led to strong
armed resistance from the local pro-independence movement.

Jakarta relinquished East Timor to the United Nations in
October 1999 following an overwhelming vote for independence in a
UN-run ballot in August that year.

Pro-Jakarta militias backed by the Indonesian army laid waste
to the half-island territory after the vote, destroying 80
percent of its infrastructure and killing hundreds of
independence supporters. It is still struggling to recover.