On East Timor issue

On East Timor issue

I thank John Hargreaves for his comments East Timor issue
published in The Jakarta Post May 2 on my article (UN statement
good deal for RI, April 25). He is correct in asserting that the
UN Commission on Human Rights is not the forum to settle the East
Timor question.

Mr. Hargreaves suggests that the talks to settle the political
status of East Timor include the participation of East Timorese.
This is not a new idea.

I remind him, first of all, that it is internationally
accepted that the East Timor issue is strictly a problem between
Indonesia and Portugal, and as such the attempt to solve it
involve only these two parties, namely the foreign ministers (and
senior officials) of the governments of Indonesia and Portugal,
which are mediated by the UN secretary-general.

There was actually an attempt to include East Timorese
"representatives" in the negotiation before it started in 1983,
but both governments agreed to drop this idea because they
realized it was a non-starter, for they could not agree on who
these "representatives" would be.

The present negotiating arrangement, which is internationally
endorsed, has of course severely irritated self-important
personalities, such as Jose Ramos-Horta, who insist on taking
part in it. However, Indonesian East Timorese have made it clear
that they are not interested in negotiating with Portugal, for
decolonization has been completed and diplomatic negotiation is
now the business of Jakarta. There is no prospect whatsoever that
Indonesian East Timorese would ever be interested in negotiating
the political status of East Timor with Jose Ramos-Horta, whose
political and moral credibility was forever shattered in the eyes
of integrationists.

The Indonesian government's policy toward anti-integrationists
is not as rigid as Mr. Hargreaves suggests. The government has
been firm, and it has to be, on those who terrorize and commit
violence and destroy public property, but the government has also
given amnesty to separatists on many occasions.

More significantly, Indonesian East Timorese have been willing
to reconcile with East Timorese of different political
persuasions. Ambassador Lopes Da Cruz, with the full support of
the government, started this reconciliation process with Dr.
Abilio Araujo in 1993 in London.

The UN secretary-general then picked up the idea to create the
All Inclusive Intra East Timorese Dialog (AIETD), which includes
Jose Ramos-Horta and some members of his group. The Indonesian
East Timorese see the AIETD as a continuation of the
reconciliation process, and also as a confidence-building measure
to help improve the atmosphere for the tripartite talks. At no
time, however, is the AIETD intended to be a forum for the East
Timorese to negotiate the political status of East Timor.

On human rights, I fully agree with Mr. Hargreaves on the
importance of this issue, and of the need to address it in a
nonpolitical and nonpropagandistic way.

But I also think that in East Timor, human rights is not the
cause of the problem, but rather the symptom of a conflict which
exploded 22 years ago, the residue of which continues to linger
today.

We are striving to heal this conflict, but on this point I
think Mr. Hargreaves is being too hard on Indonesia and too soft
on Portugal. To many Indonesians, and especially to East
Timorese, Portugal today is behaving no different than its
predecessors did 23 years ago, by pursuing a divisive policy
toward the East Timorese, by choosing sides, and encouraging
conflict rather soothing it.

Portugal's support for the Congress of Resistance, held in
Lisbon last April, attests to this. Ultimately, the key to
improving human rights does not lie in, as Mr. Hargreaves
suggest, "constant and vigorous monitoring by non-governmental
human rights organizations", but in the political will of
Portugal and the separatist groups within and outside East Timor
to de-escalate conflict, reverse radicalization and halt
militancy -- all of which are on the rise. Failure to do this
would only imperil human rights in East Timor.

DINO PATTI DJALAL

Jakarta