Timor leaders hold reconciliation meeting

Gusmao enjoys wide respect among pro-Jakarta militia leaders, the UN says

DILI, East Timor -- The man widely expected to become independent East Timor's first president has met leaders of the pro-Indonesian militias who went on the rampage following the territory's 1999 independence vote.

Xanana Gusmao, who led a guerilla struggle against Indonesian rule for several years held the meeting Tuesday in the village of Salele, on the border between East Timor and the Indonesian province of West Timor.

The meeting was designed to give a boost to reconciliation efforts ahead of a territory-wide election at the end of the month.

Gusmao has said he supports the idea of granting amnesties to militia members who return to East Timor.

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The upcoming poll, conducted under the auspices of the United Nations which currently governs East Timor, will elect a constitutional assembly for the territory ahead of formal independence expected sometime in 2002.

UN officials said about 300 people took part in Tuesday's meeting -- most of them were militia members.

It was the latest in a series of gatherings called for by Gusmao in order to persuade the leaders of the militias and their followers to return to East Timor in time for the vote.

'Respected'

"The number of participants was unexpected and unprecedented," Nagalingam Parameswaran, a senior U.N. official who organized the event told the Associated Press.

East Timorese are preparing for their first free elections at the end of the month

"The community wanted to come en masse to talk… Xanana is respected at the highest level by the pro-Jakarta leaders and he has the ability to bring the community together."

The militias were formed by the Indonesian military in the early 1990s as a way of countering the anti-Jakarta guerilla movement, which had widespread grassroots support.

Following the agreement to allow East Timor a vote on its future the army used the militias as a way to intimidate the population into voting against independence.

But attempts backfired and instead East Timorese voted almost 99 percent in favor of severing links with Jakarta.

In the wake of the vote hundreds of militiamen went on the rampage, killing unknown numbers of East Timorese, destroying businesses and burning entire villages to the ground.

Peace was eventually restored through the intervention of an Australian-led international force.

The militias fled to Indonesian West Timor where many have based themselves in refugee camps among the thousands of East Timorese forced to flee the violence.