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Alatas said U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Indonesian troops had been superseded by less imposing General Assembly resolutions.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