'Xanana' to meet IMF in Washington
'Xanana' to meet IMF in Washington
WASHINGTON (AP): East Timor's independence leader, Xanana Gusmao, will meet officials from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington Wednesday to discuss future financial aid for the former Portuguese colony, a World Bank official said Friday.
He will be joined in the talks by Jose Ramos-Horta, another independence leader and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The bank official said prospective donor countries such as Portugal, Australia, Japan and the United States had also been invited, as well as the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank.
The "informal meeting" would discuss "joint steps for reconstruction and development in East Timor," said Peter Stephens, a bank spokesman.
Gusmao, who has only recently been released from seven years imprisonment in Jakarta, is also scheduled to visit New York next week to meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
In a U.N.-sponsored referendum last month, a large majority of East Timorese chose in a referendum to break free of 24 years of control by Indonesia.
Anti-independence militias then waged a campaign of terror in the province which led to deployment of an international peacekeeping force in the province earlier this week. the deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force.
The World Bank and the IMF are expected to help East Timor develop national financial and economic institutions when the province becomes independent later this year.
Another leader of the independence movement in East Timor, Mario Alkatiri, said in Lisbon Friday that he was preparing to negotiate with the Portuguese oil group Petrogal over future cooperation with Portugal in producing oil off-shore.
Alkatiri told the Portuguese news agency Lusa that the Timor National Resistance Council (TNRC) had instructed him to negotiate the terms of cooperation between an independent Timor and Petrogal.
The Portuguese company said Alkatiri had requested a meeting with its president Manuel Ferreira de Oliveira.