Indonesia and Portugal touch the big issues

Indonesia and Portugal touch the big issues

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian and Portuguese foreign ministers
meeting in Geneva on Saturday touched on substantive issues on
the question of East Timor, while agreeing to convene a second
meeting of the All-Inclusive Intra-East Timor Dialog (AETD).

At the end of a one-day meeting sponsored by United Nations
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Indonesian Foreign
Minister Ali Alatas and his counterpart Jose Manuel Durao Barroso
issued a joint communique welcoming the results of the AETD.

Held in Austria earlier this year, the AETD brought together
30 pro- and anti-integration Timorese with the aim of helping to
create a conducive climate for the talks already underway.

As reported by Antara, Alatas told journalists after the
meeting that despite his acceptance of the Secretary-General's
proposal to convene a second AETD, he contended that the meeting
should not discuss the political solution to the East Timor
dispute.

The date and venue for the second AETD is to be decided at a
later date.

The meeting between Alatas and Barroso on Saturday was the
sixth convened under the trilateral framework set up by the UN
Secretary-General in 1983 to find an internationally acceptable
solution to the East Timor question.

The UN still recognizes Portugal as the administrative power
in East Timor, despite its integration as Indonesia's 27th
province in 1976.

Saturday's meeting also agreed that, prior to the seventh
meeting, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Alaya
Lasso would visit East Timor; sometime in late November or early
December.

The seventh UN-sponsored Indonesia-Portugal meeting has been
scheduled for Jan. 16, 1996, in London.

Although the two foreign ministers discussed substantive
issues on the political status of East Timor for the first time,
it seems little headway was made in moving either side from its
original position.

"We are still very, very far from a final solution of the
problem. That much is clear," Barroso said, as quoted by Reuters.

"We can be flexible on how to proceed with Indonesia...but we
cannot renounce principles," he said.

Meanwhile, Alatas hinted that the discussion of substantive
issues could be a long process.

"We are at the very beginning of the substantive talks and we
don't know how long it will take," he said.

Speaking on the question of relations between the two
countries, Alatas said the resumption of diplomatic ties would be
up to Portugal, since Lisbon was the one who broke off relations
after East Timor's integration.

As quoted by Antara, Alatas said he was not yet hoping for a
re-establishment of diplomatic ties and that Indonesia would
never ask for a resumption of ties.

The improvement of ties between Indonesia and Portugal is
stipulated in point five of the joint communique.

Also mentioned in the communique was the "preservation and
promotion of the cultural identity of the East Timorese."

On the issue of language Alatas rejected suggestions that
Portuguese be taught in schools throughout the province, arguing
that Indonesian and the local Tetun language had been used since
East Timor's integration.(mds)