| Subject: FT: East Timor
resistance seeks links with Portugal Financial
Times Thursday October 7 1999
EAST TIMOR: Resistance seeks links with Portugal
By David Buchan, Diplomatic Editor, in London, and Ted
Bardacke in Bangkok
East Timorese resistance leaders said yesterday their
people placed particular trust in Portugal, the territory's former colonial ruler, and
urged the United Nations to give Lisbon a bigger role in their transition to independence.
At a press conference in London, Xanana Gusmao also
stressed that his Falintil guerrilla movement should be allowed to keep its arms until all
Indonesian soldiers had quit the territory.
Despite the fact that East Timor was abandoned by Portugal
in 1975, Mr Gusmao and Jose Ramon-Horta, the Nobel peace prize winning independence
leader, made clear they did not want the UN to ignore Portuguese offers of help just
because it might smack of neo-colonialism to fellow Asians.
Mr Ramon-Horta complained that the UN was reluctant to
accept Portugal's offer to contribute 1,000 troops to the initial Interfet peace-keeping
force, for fear it would offend Asian countries. This, he said, was in the spite of the
fact that "if there is one country the East Timorese people trust, it is
Portugal".
Mr Ramon-Horta said he and Mr Gusmao wanted Kofi Annan, UN
secretary general, to appoint a Portuguese deputy administrator of the UN Transitional
Administration in East Timor which is to steer the territory to independence in 2-3 years'
time.
During this time, East Timor needed an interim currency. If
East Timor became a temporary ward of Portugal under UN administration, the best currency
option, Mr Ramon-Horta said, would be the Portuguese escudo. A strong central bank would
be needed to back the interim currency, and "only the Portuguese are ready to support
this", he said.
However, the issue of a currency is far from being decided.
Some people in the East Timor exile community, along with international advisers, are
considering the arguments for the province having its own currency; others are thinking
about adopting the Australian, US or Singapore currencies.
After his swing through Europe that included a three-day
trip to Portugal, Mr Gusmao, who is expected to become East Timor's first elected
president, said he planned to go first to Darwin, and then to East Timor "in the
second half of October".
East Timor's spiritual leader, Bishop Carlos Belo, arrived
home yesterday a month after fleeing pro-Jakarta militias.
He appealed for international help for his homeland, where
hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes and are short of food,
water and medicine. "I hope. . . the international community can work hard to
establish lasting peace in this land."
Two militiamen were killed by members of the Australia-led
multinational force in East Timor yesterday, in the first use of "lethal force"
by the UN-backed force. Two Australian soldiers were also hurt slightly as the militia
ambushed a military convoy.
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