By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Apr 26 2005 (IPS)

The insistence of Catholic Church authorities in East Timor on the immediate removal of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, a Muslim, could trigger a new civil war in this former Portuguese colony, warn analysts in Portugal.

After nine days of clergy-led protests in Dili, the capital of East Timor, the Church refuses to back down from its demand, while Alkatiri said there is no possibility that he will step down.

In a letter to the president of parliament, Francisco Guterres, a leader of the governing Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (FRETILIN), Bishops Alberto da Silva of Dili and Basilio do Nascimento of Baucau, the second-largest city in this tiny southeast Pacific nation of 1.04 million, said the prime minister should be removed because of "the current social, economic and political situation" in the country.

But Portuguese analyst Katia Catulo said that what is actually happening in the world’s newest country, which has been independent since May 20, 2002, "is the latest episode in a war between the religious and political authorities," which broke out in February when the Alkatiri administration decided to scrap compulsory religious education in public schools.

The Catholic clergy rebelled against the decision, which is based on the constitution’s explicit separation of state and religion.

The demonstrations against the elimination of mandatory religious instruction entered their ninth day Tuesday.

In a telephone interview published Tuesday by the Lisbon newspaper Diario de Noticias, Alkatiri recognised the weight of the Catholic Church in his country, where 90 percent of the population is Catholic, and the active role it played in the resistance to the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation.

But he underlined that he would not resign because "I was elected and it would set an extremely grave precedent".

"This is our first democratic government, and it would be a sign that the country will never be able to follow the route of democracy," he said.

Meanwhile, East Timor President José Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, using the prestige he won as a guerrilla leader against the occupation by the Indonesian army, attempted to broker talks between the government and the Church, so that "the concerns of the bishops, and of the people, will be heard."

But the bishops rejected talks with the government, and according to FRETILIN, which is demanding that the Catholic Church respect the constitution, their intransigence "could spark a new war."

The bishops "are creating a pre-insurrectional climate," Interior Minister Rogério Lobato told Portuguese journalists in Dili. He challenged the clergy who want to get involved in politics to "hang up your cassocks and join a political party," instead of using religion to "pester and harass the government."

The vice bishop of Dili, Apolinário Guterres, stated in a communiqué Monday that the protests by Catholics "are not only about religion," and added that "the essence of the problem lies in the model of society that is being imposed."

"The people have lost their trust and confidence in this government, and are demanding" its removal, says the statement.

But the government’s equally harsh response was immediate. Health Minister Rui Araújo said the Church had shown "a total disregard" for the constitution by seeking the government’s collapse and "questioning the legal-constitutional order."

But despite the stance taken by the Church, "the government of Mari Alkatiri once again expresses its willingness to hold a truly constructive dialogue," said Araujo.

FRETILIN warned in a statement Tuesday that it would not allow anyone to seize power by force, and urged the country not to repeat the experience of 1975, when a civil war divided the Timorese after the declaration of independence from Portugal, paving the way for the occupation by Indonesian troops.

During the quarter-century occupation, 230,000 of the 650,000 inhabitants of East Timor (the population at the time) were killed.

The semi-arid and mountainous East Timor is located in the eastern part of Timor, an island in the Indonesian archipelago that lies between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. West Timor belongs to Indonesia.

East Timor’s closest neighbour, after Indonesia, is Australia, 600 kms to the south.

In a telephone conversation with IPS, the foreign minister of East Timor, Nobel Peace Prize-winner José Ramos-Horta, said he was in contact with Monsignor Basilio do Nascimento "as a Christian with his bishop," to build "bridges of understanding."

But he criticised the position that the Church has taken against Alkatiri, which he said emerges "deep-down from the fact that he is Muslim."

"Bringing a prime minister down just because he is a Muslim in a majority Catholic country would give East Timor a bad image and would have profound repercussions in neighbouring Indonesia," warned Ramos-Horta.

Indonesia, with a population of 220 million, is the world’s largest Muslim nation.

Although Ramos-Horta is on friendly terms with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush, he said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Rees in Dili "should explain why some people (from the embassy) were present at the clergy-organised demonstrations against the government."

In an op-ed published Tuesday in the Lisbon daily Publico, Portuguese analyst Jorge Heitor said the clergy’s attacks on the government in East Timor went so far as to equate Alkatiri’s administration with what they had described as "Chinese-style Marxist democracies or retrograde Third World regimes."

A pastoral message issued last week was "the starting-point for the confrontations," because it stated that the bishops "do not believe in hastily-recycled Marxists, but are in favour of a real democracy that guarantees a state of law," said the analyst.

But Heitor said the Church’s first moves against Alkatiri took place in March, when the papal nuncio (Vatican ambassador) to Indonesia and East Timor, Malcolm Ranjith, took advantage of a trip to Dili to encourage people to fight the government’s decision to make religious instruction in schools optional.

The crisis between the country’s political and religious authorities has awakened concern in Portugal, which has strong historical and cultural ties with its former colony.

In addition, Portugal has been the country’s biggest donor for the past six years, followed by Japan and Australia, as was made clear at the international donors conference that ended Tuesday in East Timor.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral said Tuesday in Lisbon that he is closely following events in East Timor, one of the 20 poorest countries in the world, with "the utmost care and apprehension."

"We have recommended that both sides engage in dialogue, that they sit down at the negotiating table to converse, but unhappily this does not seem to be happening," said Freitas do Amaral.

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