Hasan wants E. Timor-style referendum in Aceh

Hasan wants E. Timor-style referendum in Aceh

BOTKYRKA, Sweden (AP): Sitting under portraits of ancestors he
said were killed by Dutch colonialists, Hasan M. Tiro, an exiled
separatist leader from Indonesia's Aceh region called on the
United Nations to sponsor a referendum similar to the one that
led to East Timor's independence.

Hasan said Thursday that the rebels would accept nothing less
than full independence for Aceh but that they had no plans to
hold a unilateral referendum.

"The UN has to do it because we have no means to do it," he
said in an interview at his home, which he uses as an office in a
Stockholm suburb.

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has rejected a
referendum on full independence, but instead offered Aceh a vote
on whether to establish Islamic law in the territory - an idea
Hasan dismisses.

"It has nothing to do with that," said Hasan, the 75-year-old
rebel leader who speaks with difficulty following a stroke about
two years ago. "They have to get out."

There has been some speculation in Indonesia that Hasan, who
fled to Sweden three years after his Dec. 4, 1976, declaration of
Aceh's independence, has lost authority over the rebel group as
the conflict escalates in the far-flung archipelago.

Pointing at tapes of his speeches that have been smuggled into
the province and a written appeal that will be distributed on the
rebel group's anniversary on Saturday, Hasan, who often struggled
to speak but otherwise looked healthy, shook his head against the
implication.

"There is no other legitimate leader in Aceh," his spokesman
Bakhtiar Abdullah said. "The loyalty of our people has never
changed."

"My forefathers have been killed by the Dutch - now it's the
Javanese," Hasan said, pointing to the three portraits on the
wall above his desk.

Hasan and other activists at the Free Aceh Movement's
headquarters in exile repeated assurances that the rebels planned
peaceful rallies to commemorate the group's anniversary on
Saturday.

But they expressed concerns that Indonesian military forces
might have other plans.

"It's a grand, big day," Abdullah said.

"We have received reports that they're going to sabotage the
demonstrations to provide an excuse for military force."

Abdurrahman opposes independence for the province, but he
repeatedly has said he would like to use peaceful means to
resolve the crisis and has resisted military pressure to declare
a state of emergency.

The Indonesian president has also said that he would send a
personal envoy to Stockholm to meet with Hasan.

Hasan said he had received no such offer.

He declined to say whether the rebels would consider meeting
with a governmental delegation.

"We'll see in a bit, however we have not heard from them," he
said.