Timor rebel comes out of hiding

The Age
Lindsay Murdoch
April 26, 2008

A REBEL leader who played a key role in attacks on East Timor's top two political leaders has come out of hiding to start negotiating his surrender.

Gastao Salsinha, who led a dozen heavily armed rebels to the home of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, yesterday met Government leaders, Timorese army chiefs and local Catholic church leaders at a house in Gleno in the country's western mountains.

A United Nations spokeswoman in Dili, Allison Cooper, confirmed the talks. "It appears Mr Salsinha is taking a step towards surrendering," she said.

For weeks Salsinha had told negotiators he would surrender only to President Jose Ramos Horta, who returned to Dili last week after nine weeks in Darwin recovering from gunshot wounds. But Mr Ramos Horta refused to go to the mountains to accept the surrender, saying Salsinha must give himself up.

A former army lieutenant who led 600 soldiers sacked in 2006 after they went on strike, Salsinha joined forces last year with rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, shot dead at the home of Mr Ramos Horta during the February 11 attacks.

Political leaders in Dili urged Timorese security forces not to kill Salsinha after he fled because they wanted him to tell them the identities of the figures behind Reinado.

Mr Ramos Horta has revealed that Reinado and his Timorese-born Australian lover, Angelita Pires, had been given access to $1 million in a Darwin bank account. Australian Federal Police have been asked to trace the source of the money.

If Salsinha surrenders, he is expected to play a key role in a Government offer to give the sacked soldiers their jobs back or to pay them the equivalent of three years' salary — about $US7000 ($A7493).

Government officials have been reluctant to finalise the deal while Salsinha is on the run, fearing some of the men would take the money and rejoin him in the mountains. Negotiations over the offer have been at a sensitive stage for weeks.

Although 80% of the men want to rejoin the army, analysts say their return to the ranks could revive hostilities over accusations that soldiers from western parts of the country were discriminated against by those from the east.

Mr Gusmao needs to secure the deal if the country is to return to peace, analysts say.

Since the attacks, Salsinha has often changed his account of what happened when speaking to journalists on his mobile telephone. At first he even denied going to Mr Gusmao's house.

Most recently, he claimed that Reinado was drunk, stressed and angry the night before the attacks and that he and the other rebels were not given any instructions to attack.

Investigators want to find out why the men under Salsinha's command at Mr Gusmao's house opened fire on the Prime Minister's vehicle. Reinado could not have ordered them to as he had been dead for up to an hour.