Jakarta declines SA's East Timor mediation offer
THURSDAY, 3.00PM
INDONESIA Foreign Minister Ali Alatas on Thursday declined an offer from South African President Nelson Mandela to host talks between East Timorese factions.
“It is not a new initiative or a new matter that deviates from what has been done by the United Nations,” Alatas said in reference to the South African offer.
Alatas said what Mandela had offered UN envoy Jamsheed Marker during talks in Pretoria earlier this week was to host the Intra East Timorese Dialogue between the various East Timorese factions in Indonesia and abroad. Similar meetings have already been held twice in Austria as part of the UN-sponsored Indonesia-Portugal dialogue.
However, Marker, a special East Timor envoy appointed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said in Pretoria on Tuesday that Mandela had “very kindly offered” to supply a venue for talks between Indonesia and East Timorese activists in exile.
Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 when Portugal withdrew from the colony.
