MS JOAN Burton has disappointed organisers of an international conference on East Timor by failing to announce an Irish EU presidency initiative to sponsor a Timorese peace process.
The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday opened in Dublin the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor conference which heard calls for an international war crimes tribunal for East Timor, a European Parliament study of human rights abuses and for an EU ban on the sale of arms to Indonesia.
The conference's theme is "the role of the EU in finding a solution to the East Timor problem under international law" and it brings together eminent academics and lawyers as well as political figures from east and west.
Ms Burton had been expected to announce an initiative to host direct talks in Ireland involving the now jailed Timorese resistance leader, Mr Xanana Gusmao. But she told The Irish Times she preferred to await the proposals that would emerge from the three day conference.
Recalling her own experience in the Irish Anti Apartheid Movement, she attributed a key role in the ending of apartheid to lawyers building a procedural framework of evidence. She was struck by a strong comparison with that campaign and the East Timor one, she said. In her speech she said the Government had availed of every appropriate opportunity to press the Timor issue.
However Mr Tom Hyland, coordinator of the East Timor Ireland Campaign, said he was disappointed with diplomacy. In spite of promises before the Irish presidency, "we are still for East Timor to be manifest as priority issue", he said.
Ms Burton was presented with petition from over 400 Irish European academics appealing the Government to initiate peace process for East Timor.
Dr Noam Chomsky, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a message: "We are, I think, at an important turning point ... This horror story can be brought to an end, if westerners could exhibit even a fraction of the integrity and courage shown by Indonesians protesting under conditions vastly more onerous than any of us dream of."
The proposal for a war crimes tribunal came from Dr Roger Clarke, of Rutgers University New Jersey, and was supported by an Irish barrister, Mr Peter Finlay. Mr Finlay said it was essential that individuals should be able to raise human rights cases in the International Court of Justice without needing the assent of the offending country.
Mr James Dunn, author and former Australian consul in East Timor before the invasion, spoke of "a classic case of cultural genocide" by Indonesia of the East Timorese. They would, he said, today number well over a million people - instead of less than 700,000 - had it not been for the deliberate genocide of the occupying force. Mr Dunn also urged collective action on East Timor by a group of countries that are not major powers.
A Fianna Fail senator, Mr Dick Roche, said the Irish and EU approach to East Timor must go beyond rhetoric and doubted whether the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, had "the courage of his convictions" on the issue.
Ms Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Peace prize winner, urged a policy of empowering local communities, whether they are in Northern Ireland or in East Timor.