Indonesia will refuse self-exiled resistance activist Mr Jose Ramos Horta a visa to enter East Timor, the Foreign Minister, Mr Ali Alatas, said in Jakarta yesterday. He warned him against trying to enter the territory illegally.
"If he tries to come in, he must take full responsibility for the consequences," Mr Alatas added. Mr Ramos Horta, who won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with the Bishop of Dili, Dr Carlos Ximenes Felipe Belo, said last week that, regardless of Jakarta's stand, he would return next month to campaign for independence ahead of a UN vote on the future of East Timor. In Dili Mr David Wimhurst, the spokesman for the UN mission in East Timor (UNAMET), referred to a statement by the leader of the mission, Mr Ian Martin. Mr Martin said last week that UNAMET's aim was that "any East Timorese who wants to participate should be able to do so".
Mr Alatas's comments came a day after a US diplomat in Indonesia said Washington supported Mr Ramos Horta's demands to be allowed back to campaign before the vote.
He said an agreement on the ballot reached between Indonesia and Portugal at the UN in May specified that the UN would consult East Timorese in the territory, in other parts of Indonesia or in exile.
Western diplomats, whose countries are sending volunteers to the UN force to oversee the vote, said there was no clause in the UN agreement preventing the return of exiled East Timorese.
On Tuesday, the US diplomat said Washington supported the right of Mr Horta and other East Timorese "to return to East Timor to campaign on behalf of their views".
"If resistance leader Xanana Gusmao, now under house arrest in Jakarta, chooses to participate in the campaign, we also support his right to do so," the diplomat said. In Jakarta, Mr Gusmao attended the first of a series of meetings to define a code of conduct for rival factions ahead of the ballot.
"What we discussed was a code of conduct. The Peace and Stability Committee and the United Nations are under the obligation to formulate a code of conduct for the runup to the popular consultation and the period following it," said Mr Joko Sugianto, one of the participants.
Mr Sugianto, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, was referring to a committee set up following a military-brokered agreement in an attempt to halt violence. He said Mr Gusmao, serving a 20-year jail term for arms possession and rebellion, attended the meeting in the justice ministry in Jakarta, which would reconvene today.
Mr Gusmao is president of the Resistance Council of East Timor (CNRT), an umbrella organisation for East Timorese pro-independence groups. The government has said it would not consider releasing him until after the ballot. Meanwhile, the state Antara news agency reported from Lisbon that the former president of East Timor's Fretilin pro-independence movement, Mr Abilio Araujo, who now favours autonomy, will visit Indonesia.