East Timor's president yesterday cautioned that the government has become paralyzed and is partly to blame for the violence gripping the tiny nation because it has been unable to resolve the problems that led to the unrest.
"This crisis has shaken all of us," President Xanana Gusmao told parliament in a nationally televised speech, his first address to the country since clashes and gang violence broke out in late April following the dismissal of nearly 600 soldiers.
"We have witnessed the state become paralyzed ... and worse than that, we have witnessed that the population is suffering."
At least 30 people have been killed and more than 100,000 have fled their homes in the last month, when clashes between the dismissed soldiers and loyalist forces gave way to gang warfare. The violence has eased since the arrival of an Australian-led peacekeeping force, but many people are still too frightened to leave cramped and dirty camps to return to their dwellings.
Gusmao suggested the government was accountable for the unrest because of its "lack of political capacity to solve the problems that fell upon our hands," but stressed that he was not accusing anybody specifically.
The conflict -- a repeat on a smaller scale of the devastating violence during its bloody break from Indonesian rule in 1999 -- has intensified political tensions between Gusmao, who is popular but holds a largely ceremonial role, and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, who heads the ruling Fretilin party and is blamed by many for starting the conflict when he fired striking soldiers in March.
The dismissed troops, who have camped in the hills around Dili, are demanding Alatiri's resignation, but he has refused to step down.
Gusmao, who initially rejected foreign intervention, said he was grateful for the rapid international response and praised the foreign forces for helping to gradually re-establish normalcy.
"This intervention will last longer than we have imagined, for several reasons, but particularly [because] there are weapons in the hands of civilians," Gusmao said. "And the big problem is that shots have already been heard almost everywhere in the territory, as if they were drawing our attention to this extremely serious situation."
He said his government was coordinating with the Australian forces to extend their presence into districts outside the capital, Dili, where the violence has been focused.
Gusmao's government has asked the UN to establish a new mission with a police force to replace the peacekeepers, and to stay for "not less than one year."
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday that he would send a team to East Timor to prepare for the return of UN peacekeepers, but warned that a new mission would need at least six months to set up.
In 1999, East Timorese voted for self-rule in a UN-run ballot, triggering a wave of deadly attacks by pro-Indonesia militias. The UN administered East Timor for two-and-a-half years before formal independence was declared in 2002. The new outbreak of violence has left some -- including Annan -- questioning whether the UN withdrew too quickly.
Later yesterday, the Council of Ministers was scheduled to debate the new budget, which Gusmao said will be increased to about US$312 million, to pay for reconstruction after weeks of arson and destruction, as well as community development funds, a rural credit fund and US$8 million for food security.
The UN made an emergency appeal this week for US$18.9 million in emergency aid.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion