As a new round of secret East Timor negotiations got under way in New York yesterday, "a willingness on both sides to find a solution" was identified by the chairman, the UN Secretary-General's special representative, Dr Jamsheed Marker.
A dramatic eve-of-talks sign of this willingness came from Dr Jose Ramos Horta, the Timorese resistance leader abroad. The onetime foreign minister of a briefly independent East Timor was calling on his own armed wing to stop fighting. Dr Marker saw this as a "very helpful" contribution to the peace process.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Dr Marker (75), a former Pakistani diplomat, expressed optimism in the long-term about the two-stranded process. He spoke of a "sense of movement" between Portugal, the territory's legal but long-absent administrator, and Indonesia, its illegal occupier since 1975, when it invaded the former Portuguese colony.
Dr Horta, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also called for a human rights office in East Timor under the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, "to facilitate dialogue and mediate local conflicts".
"The 22-year-old conflict can come to an end if the two main parties engaged in armed conflict in the territory [the Indonesian military and the guerrillas] are inspired by the higher interest of peace and the well-being of the people," he said.
He welcomed a recent increase in international diplomatic support for a solution, including that of President Mandela of South Africa, and went on: "In this context I wish to make the most emphatic appeal to the resistance leaders in East Timor, the freedom fighters in the mountains, the clandestine network, the youths and students, as well as those who are directly or indirectly involved in this noble struggle, to resist any temptation to engage in armed violence."
Dr Horta spoke of an escalation of violence in the last few months, "initiated by the Indonesian forces", which provoked guerrilla attacks, resulting in further retaliation. "The victims are always the weaker ones, the defenceless East Timorese population," he said.
Putting off the resistance's old demand for independence to "a later stage" Dr Horta cited possible models of "genuine political and administrative autonomy" in the Azores, Madeira, Macau, the Basque country, and the Cook Islands. But Dr Marker said of the current sensitive negotiations: "There are no models at all. We are just talking."
A crucial contemporary figure in East Timor's endgame - because of the Mandela-type respect he commands among the Timorese - is likely to be the imprisoned guerrilla leader, Xanana Gusmao. On a visit this year to Indonesia, President Mandela met Gusmao and later urged Indonesia's President Suharto to release him for talks.
Asked about progress on this initiative, Dr Marker said: "Well, it's not possible; he is in prison." In spite of the call by President Mandela, Gusmao is not even on the list for an October 20th-23rd round of the second strand of talks, which it emerged last night, are likely to be held in Austria.
Mr Tom Hyland, co-ordinator of the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign, said Dr Horta had made "a great gesture. . . Maybe he got diplomatic signals to do this on the understanding that he would get something."