KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The president of East Timor told The Associated Press on Monday that he would be willing to intercede personally to try and break the impasse in the region’s most challenging problem — Myanmar’s raging civil war, one day after his country was granted membership in the influential Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
In a wide-ranging interview in the Malaysian capital, where ASEAN was holding its annual summit, President
José Ramos-Horta said that while his country may be the region’s youngest and one of its poorest nations, its people and leaders were long on diplomatic experience.
“In the midst of so many problems in the region, in the world, ASEAN doesn’t need another headache,” he said. “But at the same time, we do have some experience in reconciliation, ending conflicts, and healing wounds of communities, of society.”
That background, he said, has served his government well in balancing East Timor’s close relationship with China and its ties to the United States, Australia and other Western nations, and in maintaining stability at home as it works to tackle complicated problems like widespread poverty, malnutrition and youth unemployment.
“My advice is to reach out to the people, do not fear them,” he said. “A government that is very connected to the people, that is reachable, is already a long way toward creating conditions of peace.”
East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, sits between Indonesia and Australia and was a Portuguese colony for more than four centuries before it declared independence in 1975.
Indonesia invaded nine days later, beginning a brutal 24-year occupation that claimed tens of thousands of lives through conflict, famine and disease. A U.N.-supervised referendum in 1999 paved the way for independence.
Both Ramos-Horta and his Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao are heroes of East Timor’s independence struggle, which led to its establishment as a free, democratic country in 2002.
Ramos-Horta won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his efforts toward a “just and peaceful solution to the conflict.”
The 75-year-old has been outspokenly critical of the seizure of power by Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.
That sparked widespread public protests, whose violent suppression by security forces triggered an armed resistance that has spiraled into a civil war with ethnic minority militias and pro-democracy groups. Thousands have been killed and millions displaced.
Myanmar, an ASEAN member, has largely ignored the bloc’s 2021 Five-Point Consensus, which calls, among other things, for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Its refusal to comply has meant its political leaders are barred from ASEAN summits, though it does send bureaucrats to take part.
For Ramos-Horta, ASEAN’s peace plan is “a very good paper” but too aspirational and thus difficult to achieve.
With people fighting and dying daily, there is a need to reach out to all sides — in one place, in person and including the Tatmadaw — to try and find an immediate agreement on a ceasefire with no preconditions, such as insisting that the military give up power, he said.
“Then explore a road map towards stabilization, a new political agreement between everyone,” Ramos-Horta said.
“That doesn’t have to be perfect — don’t expect a perfectionist democracy, it doesn’t exist. Maybe in your eyes there is perfect democracy; the only problem with that horizon is you walk, walk towards the horizon and it never hits you.”
Ramos-Horta’s criticism of Myanmar and his willingness to engage with the opposition National Unity Government group prompted its military leadership to threaten to block East Timor’s membership bid for ASEAN. East Timor overcame that hurdle, and was named the bloc’s 11th member on Sunday.
Still, while acknowledging Myanmar’s military leaders may reject him as an envoy, he said he would be willing to personally travel there to engage them if ASEAN agreed as a group on the approach.
“I will go to Myanmar to talk with the military because, well, they hold significant power,” he said. “Power to do harm and power to stop doing harm, so you have to talk with them.”
East Timor has its own problems at home, with high youth unemployment and widespread poverty.
Its accession to ASEAN gives East Timor, which has just 1.4 million people and gross domestic product of around $2 billion, better access to an economic community of nations with some 680 million people and a $3.8 trillion economy.
The bloc has already given East Timor’s people greater access to education, which Ramos-Horta called his “number one priority.”
“There are many areas of potential benefit to Timor-Leste coming from ASEAN countries,” he said. “One, that is already happening anyway, (is) more scholarships, opportunities for young Timorese to study across Southeast Asia.”
The government is seeking to diversify the economy from a reliance on oil and gas revenues, which are running out, but that will take time.
Meantime, it has a healthy $18 billion sovereign wealth fund, but experts believe it might not last much more than a decade unless new sources of fossil fuels are tapped.
Talks with Australia over the development of Greater Sunrise fields, which contain an estimated $50 billion in gas that lies beneath the seabed that separates the two countries have been long stalled.
Ramos-Horta said he is hopeful a breakthrough soon, but indicated he would not back down from his country’s demand that gas be piped to East Timor for processing rather than Australia.
“That would transform our economy, our lives, but also completely transform the relationship, Timor Leste and Australia,” he said. “Timor Leste would be ... one of Australia’s closest, closest friends, closest partners.”
He downplayed concerns from some in the U.S. and elsewhere of East Timor’s strong economic ties with China, which is actively working to increase its influence in the Indo-Pacific region, saying that his country has no Chinese debt that could be used as political pressure.
He also said that he was more than willing to work with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who, he said “makes international relations very entertaining.”
“He managed to whip all these European sycophants into line, he knows how to use his power,” he said laughingly. “And knowing how to work with his administration, with the U.S. Congress, is when you can get things done.”
He added that he had not, however, nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
