ENGAGE MAHATMA GHANDI'S STYLE TO FIGHT ISRAEL - RAMOS-HORTA

By D. Arul Rajoo

BANGKOK, Jan 12 (Bernama) -- "Stop fighting violence with violence and
engage Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience-style. You can paralyse the entire
economy of Israel, and even get sympathy among Israeli people and millions
around the world."

Timor Leste president and independence fighter Jose Ramos-Horta made this
impassioned plea to the Palestinian people.

The 1996 Nobel Laureate for Peace said that after more than 50 years,
Palestinians were still fighting for their own country because there was no
calibre and peace-advocate freedom fighters like India's Gandhi or South
Africa's Nelson Mandela emerging among them.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondent Club here as part of the International
Peace Foundation's 'Bridges' series, Ramos-Horta said Hamas could not aspire
to lead the state and the same time, continue with its basic instint of fighting
violence with violence against a powerful enemy like Israel.

"If we in Timor Leste had engaged in discriminative violence against any
seen enemy, including the Indonesian civil servants and the ordinary people, we
wouldn't be free today,' said the former foreign minister, former prime
minister and currently, president of the youngest independent country in the
world.

Ramos-Horta, who founded the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East
Timor and served as the exiled spokesman for the East Timorese resistance to the
Indonesian Government from 1975-1999, also cited experiences in several African
countries which fought for independence or the Afro-Americans who did not engage
in extremism in recent years to fight for their cause.

On the ongoing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip that has so far, killed
more than 800 civilians, he said, while it served Israel's interest to use force
against Hamas, he did not agree with labelling Hamas as a terrorist group as
they had mass support and even won the election sanctioned by the United Nations
and the United States.

On Myanmar, Ramos-Horta said he was against sanction against the country and
reiterated that any solution should take into account the status of the
powerful military.

"A road map should have clear calendar and several steps towards the final
outcome. But the privilege for military must remain as in Indonesia and
Thailand...no elected government can survive without the backing of the
military," he added.

Ramos-Horta, who survived an assasination attempt in February last year,
also spoke about the progress made by his country, saying that it was having a
10 per cent growth but the oil revenue was expected to fall this year.

"We have programmes for the poor, where more than 70,000 handicapped,
pensioners and widows are receiving US$20 a month, as well as government
programmes of buying crops which generate local economy while peace and
stability has returned," he said.

Among the challenges faced are human smuggling where foreigners from
Afghanistan and Sri Lanka are using the country as a transit point
to go to Australia and New Zealand, while illegal fishing abounded in its
territory.
-- BERNAMA