UN details on Timor talks still vague
UN details on Timor talks still vague
JAKARTA (JP): Officials would not confirm the date nor the venue scheduled by the United Nations Secretary General's office for a dialogue that will soon take place between opposing East Timorese factions.
When asked about the proposed date, the director general of information at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Irawan Abidin, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that nothing had been confirmed yet.
"We are now awaiting further communication from our permanent representative in New York," he replied, adding that the foreign ministry was keeping in close contact with the Secretary General.
The former Portuguese colony was integrated as part of Indonesia in 1976. Nevertheless, Portugal, along with a number of its allies, refuse to acknowledge the integration and maintain that Lisbon is still the administrating power in East Timor.
As reported by AFP on Friday, a leading separatist figure living in Macau, Manuel Tilman, said he had received an invitation from the Secretary General's office in New York to attend the dialog in Austria on April 24-26.
The dialog resulted from the trilateral talks between Portugal, Indonesia and Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in Geneva last month.
During the talks it was decided that the UN would facilitate an all-inclusive meeting between both pro- and anti-integration Timorese, provided the parties avoid political matters and limit the dialog to an exchange of views conducive to reconciliation between the East Timorese.
The UN sponsored dialog is fashioned after last year's two ground-breaking meetings in London which brought about friendly dialog between pro- and anti-integration factions.
The London meetings were followed up by an exchange of visits, which brought Portuguese of Timorese descent back to their homeland and Indonesian Timorese to Lisbon. The meetings were sponsored by the Portugal Indonesia Friendship Association (PIFA).
Lopez da Cruz, a senior pro-integration Timorese who led the pro-integration delegation to the London meetings, told the Post some weeks ago that he expected the dialog to take place before the next trilateral meeting on May 19 in New York.
Lopez, who is again expected to lead the next delegation, is currently in Switzerland and was not available for comment on Saturday.
Although PIFA sponsored much of the activity during the Timorese talks, Theo Sambuaga, a PIFA executive and senior legislator, told the Post that PIFA did not have anything to do with the planned dialog.
He said that the dialog is the prerogative of the Timorese people and that PIFA would only be supporting all the positive steps taken. (mds)