East Timor's hour may have come. But the Timorese resistance and Timor-watchers wonder whether Indonesia can be trusted.
And if Jakarta really does intend to leave, "will it be like when the French left Indo-China - unscrewing even the light-bulbs?" Dr Peter Carey, of Trinity College, Oxford, asked this week. "Are they going to just cut and run?"
Dr Carey is one of the speakers at a Dublin conference today on the transition and doubtful economic outlook for an independent East Timor, as it faces the prospect of a decolonisation process that has been brutally postponed for 23 years.
Only weeks ago the East Timor struggle seemed a lost cause. United Nations-sponsored talks between Indonesia and East Timor's former colonial power, Portugal, had been going nowhere for years. Now, following an apparent sudden about-turn by President B.J. Habibie last month, ministerial talks on March 10th are expected to do business on a phased road to independence. So far it has no maps.
To say the least, the modalities of change need "clarification", as called for by the imprisoned Timorese rebel leader, Xanana Gusmao, who has been moved to house arrest. He is seen as a Mandela-type figure.
Gusmao's supporters, not directly involved in this negotiation, are participating in a high-risk strategy of "not humiliating Indonesia". But the biggest problems lie on the ground among East Timor's 800,000 people. Nearly every family has lost at least one member, leaving lasting trauma. Torture, murder, massacre, forced sterilisation, a policy of diluting the population with Muslim "planters" in a Catholic/animist land, banning journalists and breath-taking disinformation.
Another conference speaker, Arnold Kohen, author of a forthcoming biography of East Timor's outspoken bishop, Dr Carlos Ximenes Belo, this week told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs of a fraught road ahead. Up to 20 per cent of the population may want to stay with Indonesia, he said.
"There is lots of hope but also lots of dangers," said Kohen. "Well-placed Indonesian sources" estimate that the Indonesian military, ABRI, has recently handed out about 20,000 weapons to pro-integrationist militia.
Indonesia's army chief, Gen Wiranto, has denied strenuously that the military is setting the scene for a civil war and analysts agree that it is much too early to speak of that possibility.
Indonesia has played the card of divide and rule, forcing many to collaborate in its intelligence work. Bishop Belo is urging guarantees even for collaborators.
Jose Lopes, who still does not know where his three brothers, members of the FRETILIN rebel army, are buried, is another of today's speakers. An exile in Ireland for several years, he stresses the need for reconciliation, particularly between "brothers" who have ended up on different sides. "Otherwise we will kill ourselves," he says simply.
This echoes the thoughts of Gusmao. Up to the time of the Indonesian change of policy the rebel leader had been calling for a 10-year demilitarised period to allow for reconciliation. But President Habibie wants the issue settled by next January.
Indonesia's motives seem to have integrity. Military occupation of East Timor costs $50 million a year. Indonesia is bankrupt and needs the better opinion of the international community so that the IMF will continue to bail it out, to clear up the crony capitalist mess left by the Cold War dictator, Gen Suharto.
Though no conditions have been directly attached to the IMF aid, Jakarta's change of heart is the direct result of international pressure, not least that from members of the US Congress last year.
"Saving Indonesia's face" involves dealing with Jakarta's refusal to countenance a one-man-one-vote referendum and its dislike of a proposed international peacekeeping force that would bear the name of the UN. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr David Andrews, already has offered Irish troops to a force that may also involve Canada and Norway, with a possible Asian contingent.
But the main difficulty in negotiation will surround the method of determining the will of the people. Indeed, who are the people? Will the estimated 10 per cent of Muslim transmigrasi from Indonesian islands, subsidised to settle in East Timor in recent years, be allowed a vote? The regional precedents for "popular consultation", Indonesia's preference, do not inspire confidence. For example, a 1960s sounding of tribal chiefs, "an act of free choice", in the former Dutch territory of West Papua (Irian Jaya), was a fiasco of intimidation. The same model was used in East Timor.
Indonesia's nightmare scenario is that East Timorese independence will create a domino effect in its unwieldy 5,000 km-long archipelago, with hundreds of tongues and cultures.
The Indonesians want to avoid the humiliation of demonstrating to the West Papuans and to Muslim fundamentalist Acehenese separatists, in northern Sumatra, that say 80 per cent of East Timorese want shut of them. One idea being discussed is that the figures from an internationally supervised popular consultation would not be published, according to a Portuguese source close to the negotiation.
Settling the East Timor issue would be to close a Cold War chapter, as Mr Habibie's close adviser and the main author of Indonesia's new policy, Ms Dewi Fortuna Anwar, has acknowledged. But will Jakarta "just cut and run"? Ms Fortuna has stressed that Indonesia will allow "a reasonable period of transition". This may be the language of change.
Today's one-day conference, organised by the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign, begins in Liberty Hall, Dublin, at 10 a.m.