Nobel Peace Prize hampers East Timor talks

Nobel Peace Prize hampers East Timor talks

By Abilio Araujo

LISBON (JP): Since the announcement concerning the awarding of
the Nobel Peace Prize to Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo and
Jose Ramos Horta, there have been numerous reactions concerning
its significance and scope, and its effects on the search for a
solution to the "East Timor Question".

As was reported at the time, I rejoiced at the award to the
bishop, but I considered it an error of the Nobel Committee to
have decided to share the prize with Ramos Horta.

Some weeks have passed, and my fears have increased, as well
as my pessimism, that the political and diplomatic process in
which the secretary-general of the United Nations is involved,
both in the Tripartite Dialogue with Indonesia and Portugal and
in the Intratimorese Dialogue, is running the risk of breaking
down and grinding to a halt.

This does not mean that the potentials of these two dialogues
have been explored exhaustively, but that there was and is
interest in continuing to maintain the radicalism and the
maximalist postures fed by a campaign which has already extended
beyond the frontiers of Portugal. It is uniting political,
economic, financial and other lobbies to restrain the Asian
tiger, Indonesia, since East Timor continues to be only a pretext
and a "good issue" for an emerging "Anti-Asia Front".

In this complex order of games and correlation of forces which
characterize the present-day reality in the world, the East
Timorese run the risk of taking up banners and slogans alien to
their interests and changing into mere fighting cocks waiting to
be sacrificed, or into simple well-behaved children in the
service of strategies with a neocolonial nature for the region of
East and Southeast Asia.

It is not out of place to stress the inopportuneness and
absurdity of this award for Ramos Horta at the present stage of
the dialogue, since it will contribute toward the division of the
East Timorese leaders and open wounds and scars which all of us
believed had finally healed.

To believe that Ramos Horta was completely unaware of the
inclusion of his name on the list of candidates, however, is
indeed a matter of concern, since it is most serious to admit
that the Nobel Committee, having clearly downgraded the standing
and figure of Belo in regard to which there was already some
expectation, opted in fact for awarding Ramos-Horta, while
converting Bishop Belo into a mere support or service acolyte.

Moreover, it becomes legitimate to question the reasons for
which Ramos-Horta and his group were the "only Timorese center of
sensitivity" to be invited by the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign
Negotiations to the Constitutive Summit Meeting of the Community
of Portuguese-Speaking Countries last July. It cast doubt upon
and even went counter to the attitude expressed and assumed by
the minister, Jaime Gama who, at the last Intratimorese Meeting
in Austria, acquainted himself with all the Timorese centers of
sensitivity taking part in the UN-sponsored meeting.

These attitudes and the equivocations of recent weeks are
sending worrying messages to the other Timorese centers of
sensitivity in regard to the pretensions of the present
Portuguese government, which has not yet given its answer to the
request for support for the creation of a cultural center in East
Timor and for the programs of training and development of the
human resources of the University of Dili, among other things.

The decision of the Nobel Committee to include Ramos-Horta in
the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, only the third award ever granted to
an Asian since the prize was created in 1901, is raising a chorus
of voices critical of the Nobel Committee, which has never
managed to award the main workers of the cause of independence,
peace and development of the Asian peoples, such as Mahatma
Gandhi or Nehru (India), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) and Sukarno
(Indonesia).

No wonder Asians are questioning the nature of the Nobel
prize, which reflects a view which is clearly identified with
awarding today only those who defend positions which are closest
to those which the West tends to consider universal, or who
thereby manage to be objective allies in the strategy of stifling
the emergent countries and economies of Asia.

I have maintained on all occasions that there is a genuine
friendship between the Portuguese and the Timorese. Even today,
many Timorese regret having already cut the umbilical cord with
Portugal and often recall the legend of the first missionary to
set foot on the soil of Timor, according to whom the people of
Timor only converted to Catholicism because of the threat to tow
the island to Portugal!

Transposed to present times, this legend is an allegory
according to which Timor forms part of Asia. It is time for
Timorese to accompany their brothers in the region and endeavor
to maintain in that part of the world a cultural and spiritual
entity.

The writer is the third president of Fretilin and promoter of
Intratimorese reconciliation meetings.