Family man bringing up a nation

By AUDREY YOUNG

Xanana Gusmao will miss the birthday celebrations for his 2-year-old son, Alexandre, in the hills above Dili on September 30.

But the 56-year-old President of East Timor will be between other pressing appointments.

On September 27, he will speak to the United Nations, after the admission of his tiny country as the newest member of the international community.

And on October 2 he meets George W. Bush in the White House.

Alexandre will get a birthday call from his father in Washington.

"I will tell his mother to eat my part of the chocolate," he says, relaxing during an interview in his Wellington hotel room last night during a state visit.

He laughs easily at small jokes likes this.

It is a device to help others to relax, not because he thinks he is funny.

He is wearing a large pounamu pendant presented to him yesterday morning at Waiwhetu Marae, in Lower Hutt. And he is smoking - a Marlboro man.

President Gusmao has two sons in his second family with his Australian wife, Kirsty Sword Gusmao.

Their second son, Kay Olok, was born six weeks ago, which is why he left the family at home this trip.

But he brought with him a painting by Alexandre for his New Zealand "cousin" Maria, born on the same day to parliamentary press secretary Josie Harbutt.

Both being pregnant, she became firm friends with Kirsty Sword Gusmao, accompanying the pair on their first trip around New Zealand in 2000. One of the highlights of this trip was the cultural events - "a very good experience to continue to revitalise our culture and make us feel our identity".

Another highlight, he said, was his meeting with Prime Minister Helen Clark.

It wasn't the first time. She attended independence celebrations on May 20, and the pair clearly get along well.

It is difficult to imagine that this suave statesman once commanded the guerrilla army Falintil, with 27,000 arms at its peak, in the mountains of East Timor resisting the occupying Indonesians.

Many were killed. Only 650 have joined the new country's armed forces, Falintil East Timor Defence Force. Many are too old or injured to pass the physical tests.

The country has an abundance of problems and the former combatants are just one of them.

They want recognition. Mr Gusmao says a commission has been set up to find out how many are still alive and how they can be properly recognised.

He would like to have an answer by August next year.

Others are suffering economically in the artificial economy created by the former presence of 2000 United Nations civilians.

"Politically, so far we have managed to calm the people, to ask them for more patience. They will wait for one year more just to know how capable our government is," he says.

"We must do everything to send a concrete message to our people that we are doing something, that it is not broken promises."

East Timor is the darling of the international solidarity movement.

Mr Gusmao does not repudiate the past but gives an opinion, "not advice", on other independence movements. "Any solution must be, should be peaceful because we faced the difference between a dialogue and violent means."

In 1983, during a ceasefire, Jakarta rejected a plan put forward by the independence movement as a way ahead.

It took 15 years for an identical framework to be accepted and in that time a spirit of hatred grew which led to the destruction and violence following the independence vote.

"Now we are spending too much money in rebuilding because of the violence. Houses, schools.

"We could have spent that money on social and economic problems," says Mr Gusmao.

His wife's former school in Melbourne has just sent tables and chairs for East Timorese schools.

Today, the president will be guest of honour at Epsom Normal Primary School, which raised money two years ago to send to schools in East Timor, and has created a "friendship quilt" to present to him.

Help of this sort, says Mr Gusmao, by real people, makes the East Timorese feel that they have not been left alone by the world and forgotten.

And he says, next time he will bring the family to share with him.

Further reading
Feature: Indonesia and East Timor

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