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.