August 5, 2000 NTT Ekspres (W. Timor)

NTT X ­ "Xanana asks PPT to immediately form reconciliation forum"

ATAMBUA ­ CNRT President, Xanana Gusmao, has written the General Moderator of the Timorese Popular Party (PPT), Herminio da Silva da Costa, requesting to form, as soon as possible, a Timor Lorosae National Reconciliation Forum. A PPT spokesperson said that pro-integration people in refuge in W. Timor had responded to the request positively. The letter was sent from Dili on 18 June and when received by da Costa was discussed in various meetings with refugees along the border. Besides the request, Xanana also corrected some PPT suggestions related to national reconciliation for all peoples of Timor Lorosae. CNRT itself strongly rejects reconciliation if one of the prerequisites is that the children of parents involved in human rights abuses in E. Timor after the referendum must be held responsible. He said this prerequisite in the PPT proposal was very heavy and inhumane, and could even become a boomerang for the accusation of new human rights abuses in E. Timor. Xanana pressures PPT founders to form a Natl. Reconciliation Forum and once the forum has been formed then is the time to discuss prerequisites for national Timorese reconciliation. "It's possible that in following discussions all prerequisites put forward, both by PPT or CNRT or other political organizations of the people of Timor Lorosae in E. or W. Timor will all wilt on their own and only one thing will be accomplished, namely national amnesty," said Xanana.

According to one PPT founder, Pedra Pereira, a former fighter in the 1975 integration, all pro-integration and pro-independence desires will be really discussed in the Reconciliation Forum. He is convinced that pro-integration suggestions will receive a lot of blessings from the human resources available on the pro-integration side. He also said he continues to make an effort to work together with UNTAS in the framework of holding the same ideals. He hopes UNTAS leaders will understand the presence of PPT and want to work together with it because General Chair of the Union for Democracy and Justice (FPDK formed before the referendum), Domingos Soares [also UNTAS Chair] in his speech at the founding of the FPDK invited all E. Timor members to learn from history so that civil war would not be repeated.

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