POLITICS-EAST TIMOR: Indonesia, Portugal Agree to Autonomy Talks

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 5 1998 (IPS) - The pace of the East Timor peace process moved up a notch Wednesday when Indonesia and Portugal agreed to hold in-depth talks about granting “wide-ranging autonomy” to the region, perhaps by the year’s end.

Following two days of meetings chaired by U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama agreed that their representatives would hold intensified discussions on Jakarta’s proposal for a “special status” for East Timor.

The two sides wwould seek agreement on the autonomy question by the end of the year, and the next round of talks on the autonomy proposal will be held in New York by the end of September under the chairmanship of U.N. envoy Jamsheed Marker.

“We have a very serious proposal on the table,” Annan said after talks ended Wednesday. “We all believe this is progress in the work we are doing.”

The two nations also agreed to a long-standing proposal to establish interest sections in friendly embassies in both Lisbon and Jakarta and to relax visa policies with each other. Portugal would likely continue to use the Netherlands embassy in Jakarta to handle its interests there, Gama said, while Alatas added that Indonesia may work through Thailand’s embassy in Lisbon.

Annan meanwhile announced that the United Nations would step up talks with a range of key East Timorese leaders – including Nobel Peace Prize laureates Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo – to involve them more in the peace process.

To boost the peace process in other aspects, the United Nations also announced Wednesday that a new round of peace talks between East Timorese leaders – including those favouring the island’s independence and those supporting Indonesia’s 1976 annexation claim – will be held by October.

“What we have achieved is…not a breakthrough in substance perhaps, but very good progress,” Alatas said. He contended that the results in this week’s talks proved that recent peace efforts by Indonesia’s new President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie were not “a bogus proposal” but rather “the most realistic, viable and just solution” to East Timor’s 23-year crisis.

Portugal is still regarded by the United Nations as Timor’s colonial authority despite Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of the state during a brief struggle for independence. The Portuguese were now satisfied that Jakarta would hold autonomy talks without insisting on a previous precondition that its rule over East Timor be recognised by Lisbon.

A U.N. communique said the autonomy discussions were “without prejudice to (Indonesia’s and Portugal’s) basic positions of principle”.

“In reality, the requirement for preconditions is not present,” Gama said. “That’s what favours the negotiations.”

Indonesia’s posture on East Timor has changed dramatically since economic woes and student protests led to the ouster of President Suharto in May. Habibie has pledged genuine autonomy – although not independence – for the region and has released some Timorese political prisoners and withdrawn hundreds of troops from East Timor.

Alatas promised progress on all three areas, contending that there would be a “much more reduced force” on the island in the coming months and that more prisoners would be released. He added, however, that any release of Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmao, the jailed head of the pro-independence forces, would not be considered at this stage.

“Xanana Gusmao does not qualify in the present phase of amnesties given to political prisoners and detainees,” Alatas argued. “He has killed, he has burned villages, he has killed innocent villagers and raided the properties of villages … It is for these criminal acts that he has been brought before the courts and convicted.”

Still, Alatas conceded, Gusmao was a “special case” and “we do visualise the release of Xanana Gusmao as part of an overall solution.” Several world leaders, including South African President Nelson Mandela, have lobbied recently for a settlement that might result in the resistance leader’s amnesty.

For its part, Portugal had been unwilling to accept the opening of interest sections between the two nations until Gusmao’s release could be settled. Sources told IPS that, following Gusmao’s own support for the establishment of interest sections prior to his release, Lisbon decided to go along with the proposal. That exchange remains one of the few concrete improvements in the peace process, despite the various steps taken this week to boost at least the pace and the stakes of the negotiations.

As John Miller, spokesman for the pro-independence East Timor Action Network, contended, “All that’s really substantive, aside from the exchange of a few diplomats, is a timetable for more talks.” Yet Miller believed the autonomy talks would be a positive step if the Timorese – roughly a third of whom were killed in the immediate aftermath of the Indonesian invasion – could gain effective control of their affairs in a step toward self-rule.

The question remained how much autonomy Jakarta would be willing to offer. Alatas said that all areas – including education and most government functions – would be on the table, except for three functions he said were normally outside the concept of autonomy: foreign affairs, defense and “certain monetary and fiscal policies.”

Certainly the pressure on Jakarta to make an acceptable offer to East Timor has grown since Suharto’s fall and East Asia’s ongoing economic woes. The U.S. Congress is considering extending a ban on several different military training programmes which have been linked to human rights abuses, while the Senate last month passed a resolution calling on President Bill Clinton to support a referendum on East Timor’s self-determination.

Meanwhile, the International Federation for East Timor has called the autonomy proposals “an interim step” – a point echoed by Gama – but added that autonomy is “only a means, not an end, without acceptance by the people of East Timor.”