UN hopes for better talks on East Timor

UN hopes for better talks on East Timor

UNITED NATIONS (Reuter): The United Nations hopes a meeting yesterday between the foreign ministers of Indonesia and Portugal to discuss the tricky question of East Timor will lead to more substantial talks on the issue.

A senior U.N. official said the aim was to hold a round of working talks by mid-July, possibly in New York, and then to keep the momentum going with subsequent sessions.

According to Indonesia's Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, Thursday's round "will mostly deal with procedures, like the format, parameters, the modalities."

"I hope nobody expects we will go immediately into the substance. We have to lay the groundwork for the talks themselves," he said in an interview.

Talks under U.N. auspices to find an internationally acceptable solution were initiated in 1983 by then-Secretary- General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

The current two days of meetings between Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama and Alatas, will be the ninth in the series but the first presided over by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who took office in January.

In a bid to revive the flagging negotiations, Annan appointed former Pakistani U.N. ambassador Jamsheed Marker as his personal representative for East Timor. Marker, who has since visited Portugal and Indonesia, including the disputed territory, will chair the talks after Annan presides over Thursday's opening session.

The eighth round of talks was held in London in June 1996. A session scheduled for late December was called off after then- Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali failed to win re-election and Annan was chosen to succeed him.

U.N. officials acknowledge the two sides are still far apart. Portugal insists East Timor must be decolonized and its inhabitants allowed to determine their own future.

Indonesia argues that East Timor was decolonized as a result of a decision by its inhabitants to opt for independence through integration with Indonesia. It denies charges by Portugal and others of large-scale human rights violations and says Fretilin guerrillas, who proclaimed East Timor's independence in 1975 as the territory erupted in civil war, represented only a minority.

Reiterating Indonesia's case, Alatas said the Portuguese "left East Timor the same way (they) left Angola and Mozambique. So the East Timorese decolonized themselves. As far as we are concerned decolonization is over."

Alatas said he had the impression Annan was "seriously committed to try to find a solution," which he said by its very definition had to be a compromise.

But the Indonesian minister was not convinced the Portuguese were as committed to finding a solution. "In their calculation, it may be better for them to stick to their guns and wait and stay put for the time being because (they believe) Indonesia in the end will give in... They are waiting for a change of the government," he added.