East Timorese pro-independence leaders pledged yesterday to share power with their pro-Indonesia rivals if Jakarta's offer of autonomy is rejected in the August UN-administered ballot.
"Our plan is within hours of the ballot results being announced by the secretary general, and if it is in favour of independence, we call a national conference of reconciliation and power sharing," the Nobel laureate, Dr Jose Ramos Horta, said. Dr Ramos Horta, the deputy chairman of the pro-independence National Council for the Resistance in East Timor (CNRT), was addressing a press conference at the house jail of the imprisoned CNRT president, Mr Xanana Gusmao.
"The pro-integration people will be invited to join us in a provisional administration for at least three years under the United Nations," Dr Ramos Horta said with Mr Gusmao at his side.
The Indonesian government will also be invited to take part in the "transition arrangement".
Dr Ramos Horta said Mr Gusmao - currently serving a 20-year jail sentence for plotting against the state and illegal possession of weapons - and all political leaders have to be released.
"There has to be free political activities by everybody, otherwise it is going to be difficult for Indonesia to prove to the world that the ballot was free when most leaders cannot participate," he said. It would be like expecting the elections in South Africa to end apartheid to be held freely with Nelson Mandela still in prison, he said.
Dr Ramos Horta said he will not visit East Timor during this visit but would in the future. He shrugged off a death threat by a pro-integration group leader. "I am personally not afraid of the threat," he said.
"He will instantly be killed as soon as he arrives in East Timor by the Aitarak or the Besi Merah Putih [army-backed militia]," the integrationist leader, Mr Joao Angelo de Sousa, said on Wednesday.
The US Senate on Wednesday voted 98-0 to require a tougher US policy in support of a free and fair vote in East Timor. The Senate in amending the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill specifically called for the Secretary of the Treasury to direct US executive directors to international financial institutions to consider Indonesian government and military efforts to ensure a peaceful ballot "in determining their vote on any loan or financial assistance to Indonesia".