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.