Little progress at East Timor talks

Little progress at East Timor talks

LONDON (Agencies): Indonesia and Portugal made little progress
in negotiations in London on Tuesday over how to solve the status
of East Timor but described their talks as constructive and
agreed to meet again.

The talks on the former Portuguese colony are the seventh in a
series that stretches back to 1983.

"We've had a very useful and constructive discussion,"
Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas told reporters
after some 7.5 hours of talks with his Portuguese counterpart
Jaime Gama and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The next meeting will be in Geneva on June 29, again with the
UN acting as mediator, when Gama said he hoped Boutros-Ghali
would have some new ideas. The meeting also set a date for talks
among East Timorese -- pro- and anti-Indonesian -- in Austria
this March.

Neither side would go into detail of the talks but one
Indonesian official said Alatas had appeared to get on much
better with the recently appointed Gama than his predecessor Jose
Manuel Durao Barosso.

A communique issued by Boutros-Ghali's office later said that
the ministers "continued their discussions on those substative
issues which have been identified related to an eventural
framework for the achievement of a just, comprehensive and
internationally acceptable solution to the question of East Timor
as well as other related issues, inter alia the preservation and
promotion of the cultural identity of the East Timorese people
and bilateral relations between Indonesia and Portugal."

Gama said the talks had not been meant to provide a quick
solution to the problems of East Timor but to cover a range of
areas from human rights there to the cultural identity of the
Timorese. "A very positive step should be made by a reduction of
the military presence there," Gama said.

Alatas dismissed as the voice of a minority those East
Timorese protesting Indonesian rule. "We never claimed that East
Timor is a paradise. But I will never accept that it is hell the
way some people depict it," he said.

Alatas said U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding the
withdrawal of Indonesian troops had been superseded by less
imposing General Assembly resolutions.

He rejected the notion that Indonesian troops are occupying
East Timor, saying, "There are no foreign troops in East Timor,
because East Timor is Indonesian."