TWO East Timor human rights campaigners received their 1996 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday and immediately called on Indonesia to open talks on a peace settlement.
Bishop Carlos Ximines Belo and the self-exiled activist, Mr Jose Ramos Horta, were handed their Nobel gold medals and diplomas in a solemn ceremony in Oslo's City Hall before hundreds of dignitaries, including King Harald of Norway.
The Nobel Committee chairman, Mr Francis Sejersted, who presented the laureates with the $1.12 million prize, said they were awarded "for their long-lasting efforts to achieve a just and peaceful solution to the 20-year-old conflict in East Timor".
The Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics were awarded later at a ceremony in Stockholm.
Bishop Belo (48), wearing his black-and-purple bishop's robe, said the people of East Timor wanted peace and respect for human rights.
"It is high time that the guns of war are silenced in East Timor, once and forever. It is high time that tranquillity is returned to the lives of the people of my homeland. It is high time that there be authentic dialogue," he said in an acceptance speech interspersed with quotes from the Bible.
"It is my fervent hope that the 1996 Nobel Prize for peace will advance these goals," Bishop Belo added.
Indonesia, which condemned the inclusion of the resistance leader, Mr Ramos Horta, in the prestigious prize when the Nobel Committee made its announcement in October, boycotted the ceremony, Nobel officials said.
But the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr Antonio Guterres, whose government supports East Timor's independence cause, was in the audience.
Indonesia annexed the former Portuguese colony in 1976 following an armed invasion the previous year. The United Nations continues to reject Indonesian claims to sovereignty and considers Portugal the administering power.
Mr Ramos Horta (48) urged the international community, including the European Union, the United States and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), to help strive for an independent East Timor.
"To Indonesia and our other neighbours in the ASEAN we are offering a hand of friendship and appealing to them to help us bring peace and freedom to East Timor," he said.