UN chief seeks new impetus to Timor talks

UN chief seeks new impetus to Timor talks

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuter): United Nations chief Kofi Annan promised on Saturday to give new impetus to the search for a solution to the bitter diplomatic tussle between Portugal and Indonesia over the future of East Timor.

The Secretary-General, who took over as head of the world body from Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali in December, on Saturday met Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas for exploratory discussions on the fringes of the World Economic Forum.

Annan was due to meet Portugal's deputy prime minister Antonio Vitorino on Sunday in Davos, where world political and business leaders were holding an annual get-together, to discuss getting stalled talks between Lisbon and Jakarta going again.

The last round of a long but so far unfruitful series of talks was called off in December because of the change of leadership in the UN which has been mediating in the search for a solution.

"(Alatas) formally asked him to try and get the talks restarted on a serious and a sustained basis," Annan's spokesman told Reuters after the meeting.

"The secretary-general felt that this was overdue and that the UN under his leadership should try to make a more consistent effort on Timor," he added.

The former Portuguese colony of East Timor, 500 km (300 miles) north of Australia, was integrated into Indonesia in 1976, after Portugal abandoned it a year earlier.

Diplomatic sources said that the secretary-general wanted new talks, which had taken the form of six-monthly encounters between the Portuguese and Indonesian foreign ministers, to be held on a less formal basis away from the public limelight.

But they gave no further details.

Alatas said that he had brought no fresh proposals to the discussions with Annan.

"I just told him that we will continue to cooperate to try and find a solution to East Timor," he told journalists after meeting Annan.

But Alatas said that the ball was in Portugal's court because Jakarta had made several concessions in the past which Lisbon had not accepted.

Portugal, for whom Timor is an emotive political issue, backs the call of Timor resistance leaders for some type of vote in the territory to allow residents to decide their future. But Jakarta rules out any such referendum.

Portugal has suggested that both countries open special interest sections in third countries to establish regular contacts as a good will gesture but Indonesia turned down the idea because it said that conditions had been attached.

"The condition was that we had to free (resistance leader) Xanana Gusmao and other East Timorese in detention," Alatas said.

Asked whether Jakarta might be prepared to free Gusmao, jailed in 1993 for 20 years, Alatas did not completely rule out some sort of trade off.

"Well, we will see...in our system someone's time in jail can be reduced every year so on the basis of good behavior."