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)