[Kabar-indonesia] 6 E.Timor Updates: Horta urges Australia to lead UN force [+The Unusual Suspect]

[Joyo at aol.com]

6 articles:

- Age: Ramos Horta urges Australia to lead UN force

- Fretilin nominates alternatives to Alkatiri

- Coffee shop politics of little help to E Temor
  crisis

- Australian commander hopes Timor violence has ended

- AFR: 'Own goals' only in East Timor [By Whit Mason]

- ST/John McBeth: The Unusual Suspect

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The Age [Melbourne]
Monday, July 3, 2006

Ramos Horta urges Australia to lead UN force

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili

Malnutrition in camps as bad as Africa

NOBEL laureate Jose Ramos Horta, who has taken control
of East Timor's crippled Government, has called for
Australia to lead a UN peacekeeping force for at least
12 months.

Mr Ramos Horta has called a meeting of ministers this
morning to discuss crises confronting the country,
including chronic malnutrition and fears that food
supplies to 150,000 refugees who fled violence could
run out.

Australia doubled its donation for emergency rations
for the refugees after the United Nations World Food
Program warned that chronic malnutrition in refugee
camps was already as bad as in the worst places in
Africa.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said an extra $4
million would help make up a shortfall in emergency
food aid to 66 refugee camps in Dili.

"Food supplies are getting lower," Mr Downer said. "If
nothing is done for several weeks, then this will
become a real problem."

The ruling Fretilin party opened the way for Mr Ramos
Horta to become caretaker prime minister when it
agreed to consider a candidate who was not a party
member. "I am not a member of Fretilin. I left 15
years ago," he said. "But I am a founding member of
Fretilin and I have strong relationships with all of
their leaders."

Mr Ramos Horta said President Xanana Gusmao agreed to
negotiate the formation of a caretaker government with
Fretilin after party leaders calmed their supporters
and called on "Fretilin elements" with weapons to hand
them over.

Mr Gusmao, who must approve the new government, had
earlier said he would refuse to deal with Fretilin's
leaders because they were illegally elected at a party
national congress.

"The President told me he had relented and asked me to
convey to Fretilin that he was prepared to talk with
their leaders," Mr Ramos Horta said.

"I believe that this really broke the deadlock and I
believe that by the end of the week we will have a
consensus name for prime minister."

Mr Ramos Horta revealed that Fretilin had "sounded me
out" on serving in a caretaker government. "I said I
am available to serve in any capacity in a Fretilin
government," he said.

The constitution states that Fretilin as the majority
party has the right to nominate the prime minister.

As co-ordinating minister, Mr Ramos Horta effectively
became the country's leader when Fretilin prime
minister Mari Alkatiri was forced from office last
week following allegations that he knew about a hit
squad to eliminate political rivals.

The new prime minister will lead the country until
elections next year.

In an interview, Mr Ramos Horta called for the first
time for Australia to lead UN peacekeepers in East
Timor.

The UN has already agreed to send 1000 international
police, many of them Australians.

"The security situation has significantly improved
compared to when the Australians first arrived," Mr
Ramos Horta said, "but the situation is still very
precarious".

"If we do have a problem breaking out in remote areas
. . . I prefer that we have robust army here with
helicopters to quell any problems."

Mick Slater, the commander of Australia's more than
2000-strong peacekeeping force in Dili, said
yesterday: "Whether we transform into some sort of UN
force is yet to be seen."

The United Nations has a team in Dili assessing the
situation.

"Once the UN decides what it is going to do, we will
no doubt tailor our future commitment here to support
the UN intentions," Brigadier Slater said.

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Fretilin nominates alternatives to Alkatiri

By Jill Jolliffe

DILI, July 2 (AAP) - The embattled Fretilin party will
offer three candidates for caretaker prime minister to
president Xanana Gusmao in coming days, according to
an inside source.

A weekend meeting of the party's national political
commission shortlisted Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos
Horta, outgoing Health minister Rui Araujo and
Agricultural minister Estanislau da Silva as
contenders to replace Mari Alkatiri, who quit under
pressure a week ago.

Arsenio Bano, the young minister for Labour and
Solidarity, was also discussed the source said.

Under constitutional powers adopted by President
Gusmao during the violent political crisis of past
months he will choose from a proposal by Fretilin, the
country's most-voted party, and other possible
candidates.

Veteran diplomat Ramos Horta is considered the
frontrunner by many.

Best known in recent times as East Timor's Foreign
minister (he also took on the defence portfolio during
the crisis), he is a non-Fretilin candidate who is
acceptable to both Alkatiri supporters and Gusmao.

Araujo, a New Zealand-trained doctor of liberal
outlook, has earned respect for the quality of the
health ministry he founded after independence to cope
with East Timor's pressing problems in this field.

Da Silva's agriculture ministry is another success
story for the Fretilin government, but he is
politically identified with the hardline Mozambican
wing of the party close to Alkatiri, so is likely to
be a less acceptable candidate, at least for the
leading job.

The same source said the three names were proposed as
a team to take the posts of prime minister and two
deputy prime ministers in the cabinet, adding that
Fretilin is in disagreement with the president over
the nature of the government-in-the-making.

"We are talking about a government to last until the
next elections, probably in early 2007," the source
said.

"We don't agree with the idea that a short-term
caretaker government should be appointed now to be
replaced later by the Fretilin nominees."

Gusmao has said Fretilin should not form a new
government until it holds another party congress,
because a May congress which revoked use of the secret
ballot renders the current party leadership
illegitimate under East Timor's laws on political
parties.

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Coffee shop politics of little help to E Temor crisis

By Jill Jolliffe

DILI, July 2 (AAP) -- A meeting of East Timor's
parliament tomorrow will underline the surreal
political world in which the troubled fledgling nation
is now existing.

The country has no government, yet its 88
parliamentarians are being asked to approve its budget
- after the fiscal year has ended - as well as
electoral laws to eventually allow citizens to choose
a new government.

President Xanana Gusmao has accepted prime minister
Mari Alkatiri's resignation, but he has not passed the
decree to formalise it, leading politician Mario
Carrascalao observed, and six opposition parties have
threatened to boycott parliament, but have now changed
their minds.

It's as though the leaders are playing games with the
people, who are completely out of it.

The president is ruling under emergency powers, but a
week after Alkatiri quit over accusations he was
responsible for the months of violence, Mr Gusmao has
failed to name a caretaker prime minister.

Eight cabinet members preempted Alkatiri's decision to
quit by hours, leaving only a shell of the former
structure, drawn mainly from hard-line Fretilin
ministers known as the Mozambique mafia, where they
lived in exile during the resistance war against
Indonesia.

With Timor lacking not only leaders, but also a police
force, power now seems to pass through the
Portuguese-run Hotel Timor's coffee shop - a spot
continually haunted by politicians, a horde of
journalists and assorted camp followers eavesdropping
for the latest piece of political gossip.

Only the occasional rumble of Australian armoured
personnel carriers is a reminder that the matters at
stake are deadly serious.

Beyond the coffee shop windows peacekeepers protect
around 75,000 displaced victims of successive waves of
violence.

The key debate revolve around the legality of Mr
Alkatiri reoccupying the parliamentary seat which he
obtained in 2001 elections but left to become prime
minister.

He is facing questioning by chief prosecutor
Longuinhos Monteiro over allegations that during the
strife he armed a militia unit to attack his political
opponents. He is suspected (but not indicted) of
committing crimes carrying a penalty of 15 years.

He evaded a notification to appear on Friday on the
grounds that his lawyers had not arrived from abroad.

The ex-prime minister also asserted in his letter to
Monteiro that he enjoys immunity as a parliamentarian,
although he still occupies a legal twilight zone
between the two jobs. He is expected to turn up for
his old job when the legislators meet.

Immunity can be lifted for any deputy charged with
crimes carrying more than a two-year penalty, but
there is a catch-22: the president must ask the
deputies to approve its lifting, and Mr Alkatiri's
party has an overwhelming majority of 55 out of 88
seats.

In a national address Mr Gusmao specifically asked
parliamentarians to return to work to pass the budget.

Monarchist deputy and lawyer Manuel Tilman points out
that the $US315 million ($A427.38 million) budget
proposed for 2006-2007 cannot be approved legally, so
the country will have to lurch on under monthly
extensions of the 2005-2006 version, valued at $US142
million ($A192.66 million).

The overdue approval of an electoral draft bill was a
different matter, he said, as the babble of the coffee
lounge intriguers rises.

"We can't approve a budget without a government," he
observes solemnly, because it requires specific
projects and expense details, but we can pass an
electoral law without a government - that's not a
problem."

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Australian commander hopes Timor violence has ended

By Rob Taylor, South-East Asia Correspondent

DILI, July 2 (AAP) - A week of peaceful political
rallies in East Timor indicates months of violence
between rival ethnic gangs and security forces may
have ended, Australia's taskforce commander says.

Brigadier Mick Slater said today two major
demonstrations, including one in support of ex-prime
minister Mari Alkatiri, had passed without incident
despite fears they could have sparked fresh house
burnings and attacks of the sort which have claimed
more than 30 lives.

"I'm generally rather hesitant about talking of
achievements and success, because in these changing
situations some of those successes can be very brief,"
Slater said.

"I think we've got a watershed in the situation here
as a result of the successful conduct of two major
demonstrations."

The rallies involved supporters and opponents of
Alkatiri, who resigned last Monday over allegations he
sanctioned the arming of militia hit squads to take
out his political opponents.

The charges gained credibility when former Interior
Minister Rogerio Lobato - a deputy leader in
Alkatiri's ruling Fretilin party - was indicted and
testified that Alkatiri had ordered arming the squads.

Slater said the demonstrators had come to Dili and
then returned home without incident, largely thanks to
organisers who had urged calm.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also
believes East Timor may now be in process of
stabilising and that a new prime minister could be
installed within days.

"What I can say from the last conversation I had with
the East Timorese, they are resolving their political
problems," Downer said after talks with East Timor's
foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta.

"We don't want to be just there while they continue to
squabble at the political level."

The United Nations yesterday warned of a looming
crisis in the country with emergency food stores
running out for the estimated 150,000 refugees living
in makeshift tent camps in Dili and surrounding
districts.

The camps continue to swell as Fretilin negotiates
with President Xanana Gusmao on a new government.

Downer said today the situation had prompted the
Australian government to double its aid contribution
to $8 million.

"That should help bide them over for the time being in
any case, and hopefully other donors will come to the
party as time goes on," he said.

Slater said sporadic unrest continued in some
districts, but was subsiding and appeared unrelated to
the political crisis.

Peacekeepers from Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and
Portugal were now urging the refugees to return home,
although Slater acknowledged many of their houses had
been torched by warring gangs from the countries east
and west.

"The people in the camps were concerned about the
demonstrations and they were reluctant to start moving
home largely for that reason," he said.

"The threat from the demonstrators has now gone."

Peacekeepers are working with the UN on a plan to
build confidence among the refugees, targeting
successive areas with increased troop numbers and
relocating refugees when it had been secured.

"We will ... identify the suburb that is most likely
to be successful quickly," Slater said.

"Once that suburb or community is re-established,
we'll move on to another and try and grow the process
that way."

But in a pointer to the fragility of the peace, he
said taskforce chiefs were concerned about fresh
unrest after fake photos were distributed yesterday
showing Alkatiri being led into arrest by Australian
peacekeepers.

"I had one of my staff ring Dr Alkatiri's staff
immediately, advise them that this was on the streets
and that it was in his interest, my interest and the
community's interest that the rumour be put down
immediately," Slater said.

At a subsequent press conference Fretilin chiefs
accused the anonymous authors of the leaflets of
provoking "instability and confusion"

The violence has been the worst to hit East Timor
since it voted to break from Indonesian rule in 1999
in a UN-sponsored referendum.

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Australian Financial Review 
Monday, July 3, 2006

'Own goals' only in East Timor

By Whit Mason 

 Australia failed at the one important thing East
Timor needed, argues Whit Mason.

In the past few weeks, two Australian dreams have come
crashing to earth. First, there was chaos in East
Timor and then the Socceroos' defeat by Italy.
Notwithstanding some dubious officiating in the
latter, both disappointments stemmed from much the
same shortcoming.

As Guus Hiddink said after the Socceroos lost to
Italy, dominating the game in midfield is all very
well, but in itself it doesn't achieve the goal of the
game; to win, eventually you have to put the ball in
the net. Incremental successes, in other words, don't
necessarily add up to ultimate victory.

In East Timor, successfully managing the nuts and
bolts of constructing a tiny new state could not in
itself achieve the goal of the intervention: to help
midwife the birth of a new East Timorese society free
of the violence, insecurity and indignities its people
suffered under Indonesian rule.

The Australian-led peacekeeping force and the UN
administration in East Timor earned their reputation
for success by doing well the things that other
missions have often also done well. We know how to
address the material needs of displaced people. We
know how to deploy security forces to keep a lid on
some forms of violence, at least temporarily. We know
how to organise elections. And we know how to draw up
new political institutions that conform, on paper, to
our notions about prosperous, democratic societies.

What today's nation-builders do much less effectively
- if indeed they attempt it at all - is to heal the
wounds or fill the gaps in a society's political
culture which either caused, or resulted from, their
violent collapse. Societies don't fall apart because
they lack the manual skills to build simple shelters
or even to describe idealised political institutions.
They fall apart because their people, often aggravated
by trauma, material privations or institutional
shortcomings, lack the capacity to resolve their
differences civilly. This lack, in turn, reflects the
absence of a sense of belonging to a community that
extends beyond the family or village, and the
confidence that one's countrymen will operate
according to an identity of interests and a set of
shared mores.

While realising that even collapsed societies can have
very good elements, nation-builders must recognise
that their political cultures invariably require first
intensive surgery and then lengthy rehabilitation.
Much of the failure to address the essence of the
nation and state building challenge - in Kosovo and
Afghanistan at least as much as in East Timor - can be
traced to ignorance about the host society (and
non-Western and traumatised societies in general), to
ideologically imposed constraints (often reinforced by
timidity and stinginess), and to self-defeating
hastiness.

East Timor's recent crisis was sparked by frustrations
among soldiers and police from its western provinces.
Mike Smith, a retired Australian major-general who was
deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force in East
Timor, said last week that the peacekeepers were never
aware of any ethnic or regional divisions within the
army.

In a fractured society, nation-builders must assume
that people's loyalties are primarily local. They
should also assume that being victimised has not
generally ennobled people but made them anxious and
mistrustful.

Most of those involved in the East Timor intervention
were laudably loath to act like neo-imperialists. But
such unobtrusiveness can be self-defeating. The
Falantil freedom fighters, for example, were allowed
to create an army - without mechanisms to prevent its
domination by a regional power base. East Timor is the
poorest nation in Asia and has one of its highest
birth rates. Yet foreign nation-builders deferred to
the Catholic church's view of family planning, even
while struggling to build an economy to provide for
the exploding population.

Nation-building is a long process - much longer than
the political and budgetary cycles that drive the
politicians and bureaucrats who decide when
interventions begin and end. Officials on the ground
in East Timor pleaded with the UN Security Council to
maintain a robust presence well after the country's
independence in 2002 to no avail.

Alas, time was up before the goal was found.

Whit Mason is the co-author of Peace at Any Price: How
the World Failed Kosovo, Hurst, London, published last
week. He is a former UN official and NGO director in
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and East
Asia.]

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The Straits Times (Singapore)  
July 2, 2006

The unusual suspect

By John McBeth

After weeks of resisting calls to step down, Timor
Leste's Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri finally resigned
on Monday. Senior writer John McBeth explains why the
practising Muslim has always been regarded with
suspicion in the staunchly Catholic country.

A DESCENDANT of Islamic-proselytising Yemeni traders,
educated in the then-Marxist-ruled states of Angola
and Mozambique, the newly deposed prime minister of
Timor Leste Mari Alkatiri is a complex and enigmatic
figure who has easily worn the image of the villain in
the months of unrest that has wracked Asia's newest
country.

Labelled variously as corrupt, a control freak and
even a communist, the slight 55-year-old technocrat is
facing the same accusations now formally levelled
against ex-interior minister and close ally Rogerio
Lobato - that he distributed weapons to civilian
militia, allegedly with the intention of liquidating
his political opponents.

But if Lobato has implicated him in the purported
conspiracy, many questions remain unanswered. 'More
evidence is needed to determine conclusively that he
was involved,' says one Western diplomat in Dili.

'The difference between arming civilians and actually
hiring hit squads has been lost on most people.'

Diplomats also question the capacity of the Timor
Leste authorities to conduct a proper investigation,
given the ethnic, political and historical factors
that continue to divide the society. Chief among them,
according to one analyst, is the struggle for the
levers of power between those who fought for
independence on the ground and those who worked in the
political underground abroad.

Mr Alkatiri, who often comes across as cold and
autocratic, is no match for President Xanana Gusmao in
the popularity stakes. Although he and his
Revolutionary Front of Independent Timor (Fretilin)
may have outgunned the President in drafting the
country's Constitution, the charismatic former
guerilla fighter has demonstrated that he still
commands moral authority when the chips are down.

Not everyone seeks to demonise Mr Alkatiri, a
constitutional expert who appears to genuinely believe
he is doing the best for his country.

'He's very capable and has an immense understanding of
things Timorese,' says one Western diplomat, who
admits he is baffled by current events. 'He's hugely
astute, there wouldn't be a strategic thinker better
than him. But he does have a penchant for going off
the rails.'

That showed in the inflammatory speech Mr Alkatiri
delivered after he was forced to step down. It may
also be shown in the current investigation into why as
many as 4,000 automatic weapons were imported over the
past four years and why the Lobato-controlled police
force grew in the same timeframe from 1,800 to 3,000
men - more than twice that of the army, which is
generally loyal to Mr Gusmao.

Mr Alkatiri was born in Dili in November 1949, one of
10 brothers and sisters. After completing primary and
secondary school, he left in 1970 to pursue higher
education in other sleepy Portuguese colonies,
graduating as a chartered surveyor at the Angolan
School of Geography and then earning a law degree at
Mozambique's Eduardo Mondlane University.

He was already active in the independence struggle,
helping to establish the Movement for the Liberation
of Timor Leste and then, in 1974, co-founding Fretilin
and its armed wing, the National Liberation Armed
Forces of Timor Leste.

Returning to Dili after the Portuguese abandoned the
enclave in 1975, he became Minister for Political
Affairs in the newly declared Democratic Republic of
Timor Leste.

But it was all to be short-lived, with the
impoverished island colony sliding into a bitter civil
war between followers of the Marxist-orientated
Fretilin and Indonesian-backed rightists. In December
1975, Mr Alkatiri left Dili as a member of a three-man
delegation seeking to head off Jakarta's impending
invasion. It was to be the last flight out.

Three days later, Indonesian troops poured across the
border, leaving Mr Alkatiri to spend the next 24 years
in Mozambique, working in the shadow of leading
Timorese lobbyist Jose Ramos-Horta to rally
international support for the resistance movement. He
was not to return to the country until October 1999,
six weeks after the country's bloody vote for
independence from harsh Indonesian rule.

In September 2001, Mr Alkatiri was appointed Chief
Minister of the United Nations-guided Second
Transitional Government and Minister for Economy and
Development. Six months later, on May 20, 2002, he
became Prime Minister and Minister for Development and
Environment of the fully independent Democratic
Republic of Timor Leste.

In the four years since then, Mr Alkatiri has been
unable to shake the suspicion with which he is viewed
by a majority of Timorese - not least because he is a
practising Muslim in a staunchly Catholic country. His
plan last year to make religious education optional in
schools only alienated him even further from
influential church leaders.

Then there is the Marxist tag, which continues to
haunt him in an era when the Cold War template seems
strangely out of place.

Australian-educated Resources Minister Jose Texeira,
who worked closely with him in the testy negotiations
with the Australian government over oil and gas rights
in the Timor Sea, described that accusation in one
recent interview as 'very, very foul'.

Certainly, Mr Alkatiri is not popular in Canberra. But
he was not alone in taking a tough line.

UN administrator Sergio de Mello, later killed in the
bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, brought
former US diplomat Peter Galbraith on board in 2000,
first as director of external affairs and then as
minister of external affairs in the first transitional
administration.

According to Mr Galbraith, Mr de Mello 'smelt a rat'
over Australia's rush to negotiate a new agreement to
replace the controversial Timor Gap treaty it had
signed with Indonesia in 1989 - seen as
quasi-recognition of Jakarta's 1975 annexation of the
territory. Mr Galbraith and Mr Alkatiri, both equally
combative, proved to be an effective tag team.

Still, there is something familiar and old-fashioned
about what Mr Alkatiri's government hoped to achieve,
electing to force the Portuguese language on a
population that overwhelmingly speaks Tetum and
Indonesian. Dominated by other like-minded exiles from
Mozambique, it has been edging towards the
establishment of a one-party state with little
adherence to the most basic of democratic principles.

The approach to free and fair elections has been one
major cause for concern, given the fact that Timorese
have yet to directly elect their representatives -
something they perhaps should have done under initial
UN tutelage. Although the first parliamentary
elections are due next year, little effort has been
made so far to introduce a new electoral law or form
an independent commission to conduct the exercise.

Particularly worrying for critics is the way Mr
Alkatiri retained his controlling position as
secretary-general of Fretilin by replacing a secret
ballot with a show of hands at last month's party
congress.

Diplomatic sources say he had hired goons sitting next
to each voting candidate to ensure they voted the
right way.

Would-be challenger Jose Luis Guterres, the former
ambassador to the UN and the US, dropped out of the
running in disgust. As he put it: 'They have chosen an
electoral method that is typically Leninist and used
by the leaders of communist countries to maintain
their hold on power.'

As the architect of the country's national development
plan, Mr Alkatiri was popular with donors.

But analysts say while the plan was fine on paper and
did not betray any ideological bias, its
implementation has become bogged down because he was
trying to keep everything under Fretilin's control,
including jobs in the civil service. The result has
been a grossly underspent budget for 2005-2006 and a
failure to build on what the UN prematurely left
behind.

Mr Alkatiri's ultimate fate will be decided over the
next few weeks as the political drama plays itself
out. The father of three children may have his back to
the wall, but no one is counting him out just yet.

Strategic thinker

'He's very capable and has an immense understanding of
things Timorese. He's hugely astute, there wouldn't be
a strategic thinker better than him. But he does have
a penchant for going off the rails.' A WESTERN
DIPLOMAT, on Mr Alkatiri

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