Gusmao welcomes Timorese refugees returning from RI

Gusmao welcomes Timorese refugees returning from RI

SALELE, East Timor (Agencies): In a gesture of reconciliation, East Timor's independence hero Xanana Gusmao welcomed home the families of former pro-Jakarta militiamen on Friday as mass refugee returns resumed across the border with Indonesian West Timor.

Gusmao predicted that the homecoming, the largest since the beginning of year, would be the first of many over the next few months.

"It is a very important step for the future," said Gusmao said. "This event is a practical way to show to refugees what they can do to live together with other East Timorese and develop our country," he said.

With chickens and pigs in tow the East Timorese refugees returned home on Friday, two years after fleeing their homeland when it erupted into violence during the 1999 independence ballot.

Gusmao waited for the returnees at the end of the Metamasin bridge, near East Timor's southern border town of Salele, and hugged them as they arrived.

Seeing them off from the other side was Indonesian military commander for West Timor, Maj. Gen. Willem da Costa.

Some 961 refugees attached to members of the pro-Jakarta Mahidi militia were registered to return home Friday, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in East Timor, Bernard Kerblatt, told AFP from East Timor's capital Dili.

By late afternoon 450 refugees had crossed the border and more were still streaming across the bridge, said UNHCR official Iain Hall. Kerblatt said the operation could continue till Saturday.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), providing trucks to take the refugees to their home villages in Suai and Ainaro districts, said the return was the largest since March 2000.

"Another 312 refugees crossed the border at Batugade on Wednesday, suggesting that a long awaited upturn in refugee returns from West Timor may be under way," an IOM statement said.

The Mahidi leader, Cancio Lopes de Carvalho, said before the repatriation that he had allowed his people to leave the squalid camps in West Timor and go home.

Around 250,000 East Timorese either fled or were forced into West Timor by militiamen and Indonesian soldiers after the 1999 ballot that ended decades of rule by Jakarta.

At least 50,000, many of whom are being held as virtual prisoners by the militia who fled with them, remain.

Friday's return was the result of months of negotiations between the UN administration in East Timor and militia leaders.

Cancio Lopez da Carvalho and his brother Nemecio - former commanders of the "Live or Die for Integration" militia - accompanied the refugees across the border, but returned to Indonesia after meeting with Gusmao.

"Xanana and all of the East Timorese people are ready to receive us, so I am not afraid to come back," said Cancio Lopez da Carvalho.

Gusmao, who is almost certain to become the territory's first president when the temporary U.N. administration pulls out next year, has said he supports amnesties for militiamen who admit to their role in the 1999 violence.