Reconciliation needed to ensure stability in E. Timor: Gusmao
Reconciliation needed to ensure stability in E. Timor: Gusmao
Agencies, Stockholm/Wellington
East Timor's President-elect Xanana Gusmao on Tuesday stressed the need for a policy of justice that "eschews revenge, resentment and hatred" against those who committed atrocities during his nation's drive for independence from Indonesia.
Gusmao said his government would announce its position regarding such suspects soon after it formally gains independence on May 20. He said it is important that the healing process be peaceful to ensure the stability of the half-island nation of 800,000 people.
He said he planned to travel to New York to ask the United Nations to extend their peacekeeping mission for two more years, "with only a gradual downsizing."
Gusmao acknowledged that fighting in the Middle East and troubles facing Afghanistan were taking much of the world's attention and said it was important for East Timor to set a good example with a smooth transition to independence and cooperation with Indonesia.
"To relieve the burden on the international community, we must see our reconciliation efforts as a means of consolidating national stability and of contributing to world peace," he said in a speech at a two-day international conference to debate ways to address the aftermath of conflict.
The leader has said he wanted to grant amnesty to those already indicted and in prison and would ask parliament to issue a decree granting the president special powers to do so.
"We advocate a reconciliation process whereby justice is meted out to perpetrators but which eschews revenge, resentment and hatred," Gusmao said on Tuesday.
The United Nations blames Indonesia's security forces for orchestrating the bloodshed, in which hundreds of people were killed and much of the territory's housing and infrastructure destroyed after an independence referendum on Aug. 1, 1999.
The violence only stopped when international peacekeepers arrived. East Timor shares an island with West Timor, an Indonesian province.
Gusmao, a former guerrilla leader, was elected president by a landslide earlier this month after a 24-year struggle to break free of Indonesian rule. He will be inaugurated on May 20, when the U.N. transitional administration ends.
Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson said it was important to study what happens after genocide and other human rights violations and learn how better to handle the aftermath.
"It demands from us ... courage, awareness and a will to share responsibility," he said in opening remarks.
Representatives from more than 40 countries, including the United States and South Africa, were attending the forum, which follows similar conferences arranged by the Swedish government on the Holocaust in January 2000 and on intolerance in January 2001.
In Wellington, New Zealand government officials said on Tuesday that Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will briefly visit East Timor during a week-long swing through four Asia-Pacific countries beginning late this week.
Japan, which occupied East Timor during World War II, has several hundred peacekeepers in the former Portuguese territory, which was ruled by Indonesia for 24 often-bloody years.
Koizumi will be the first head of state to visit East Timor since last Sunday's election of Gusmao to lead the territory to independence next month.
The Japanese leader will call in to the capital, Dili, at the weekend after a short stop in Vietnam and ahead of trips to Australia and New Zealand, the New Zealand officials told Reuters.