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.