Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (57 page)
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Authors: Samantha Power
BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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Gusmão recalls the sense of relief within his party. “This was the time we started to believe that Sergio was committed to the Timorese,” he says. “The Security Council had given him all of the power, but he said, ‘No, I need you.’” He approached Vieira de Mello after his speech and said, “I see this is not Cambodia after all.”
Vieira de Mello’s ties with Timorese officials improved. Ramos-Horta, the unofficial foreign minister, began to tease him for his authoritarian tendencies, referring to him as the “Saddam Hussein of East Timor” or chiding, “Sergio, you have more powers than Suharto ever did. How can you live with yourself?” Vieira de Mello could give as good as he got. He referred to Ramos-Horta as “Gromyko,” the eternal Soviet foreign minister. “José, you’ve been foreign minister of East Timor for twenty-four years. You’ve never managed a career change or a promotion.”
Officials in UN Headquarters had a different reaction: Vieira de Mello was breaking the rules. The Security Council had empowered the UN, and not the Timorese, to run the place before independence. Vieira de Mello scheduled a video conference with New York to defend his power-sharing plan. Without informing Headquarters, he invited the Timorese who were slated to become cabinet members to participate in the discussion. “Sergio knew that he was trying to do something revolutionary in the UN system,” recalls Prentice. “And his attitude was, ‘If you want to deny the Timorese power, then have the guts to fucking say it to them yourself.’” UN officials in New York muted their concerns, and on July 15, 2000, Vieira de Mello swore in a new mixed cabinet. UN officials would keep control of the police and emergency services, and the political affairs, justice, and finance portfolios. Timorese would take charge of the ministries for internal administration, infrastructure, economic affairs, and social affairs. A few months later Ramos-Horta, who had informally represented East Timor abroad for years, would become the official minister for foreign affairs. For the first time in the UN mission, high-paid foreigners would work under Timorese managers.
Some UN staff in East Timor were even more uneasy with the new arrangement than those in New York. They had not come all the way to East Timor to answer to Timorese, they said. Their contracts said that they worked for the UN secretary-general.
14
Vieira de Mello decided to confront the UN staff members who resisted the changes. He assembled the entire UN staff—some seven hundred people—along with the four new Timorese cabinet ministers, in the auditorium of the parliament building. He spoke from the dais and, pointing to the Timorese sitting in the front row, said, “These are your new bosses.” When one UN official objected that there was no provision in the UN Security Council resolution for what UNTAET was doing, he was defiant. “I assume full responsibility,” he said. “You either obey, or you can leave.”
14
Vieira de Mello decided to confront the UN staff members who resisted the changes. He assembled the entire UN staff—some seven hundred people—along with the four new Timorese cabinet ministers, in the auditorium of the parliament building. He spoke from the dais and, pointing to the Timorese sitting in the front row, said, “These are your new bosses.” When one UN official objected that there was no provision in the UN Security Council resolution for what UNTAET was doing, he was defiant. “I assume full responsibility,” he said. “You either obey, or you can leave.”
Vieira de Mello also set out to mend fences with FALINTIL soldiers, who were still holed up in their barracks. The UN supplied $35,000 worth of humanitarian assistance per month until February 2001, when the new army, the Timorese Defense Force, was officially christened. He had stopped viewing FALINTIL through the prism of the KLA and had come to see how central the fighters were—culturally, as well as practically—to Timorese identity and stability.
Timorese leaders were only temporarily appeased by Vieira de Mello’s power-sharing initiative.They quickly grew dissatisfied with the pace of the transfer of power.
15
Sure, they were part of a mixed cabinet, but they could not fire UN staff, and the UN senior staff continued to hold their regular executive meetings without them, presenting them with regulations as if they were faits accomplis.
15
Sure, they were part of a mixed cabinet, but they could not fire UN staff, and the UN senior staff continued to hold their regular executive meetings without them, presenting them with regulations as if they were faits accomplis.
Although he never attacked Vieira de Mello personally, Gusmão slammed UNTAET. The Timorese were supposedly being taught “democracy,” he said, but “many of those who teach us never practiced it in their own countries.” The UN were preaching reliance on nongovernmental organizations, but “numerous NGOs live off the aid ‘business’ to poor countries.”
16
16
Part of what was irking Gusmão was the absence of a “transition timetable.”
17
As he remembers it:
17
As he remembers it:
The people were asking, How long? How long? How long? It was important psychologically to get a timeframe. If you just say “transition,” without giving specifics, ordinary Timorese will say, “Twenty-four years—yes, that was a transition!” They were asking, we were all asking, quite simply, When will the
malaes
[foreigners] go?
malaes
[foreigners] go?
Vieira de Mello responded to Gusmão’s demands, and in January 2001 he finally laid out a political road map. An eighty-eight-member constituent assembly would be elected in August.This assembly, in turn, would draft and adopt a constitution within ninety days, decide upon the date for presidential elections, and choose the date on which East Timor would become independent. The assembly, duly elected, would decide to sign the constitution in March 2002, hold presidential elections in April, and receive full independence at long last in May.
By mid-September Vieira de Mello had formed a new cabinet, composed only of Timorese. With the deadlines in place, the Timorese were finally confident that they would soon take over, and tensions abated.
Vieira de Mello had managed to bend UN rules in order to do what he thought was best for East Timor when it came to security and self-government. But he was never able to redress the greatest source of frustration in East Timor: the UN rules that forbade him from spending money directly on the country. In the economic sphere, these rules ensured that the large UN peacekeeping and political mission managed to distort local economies without being able to contribute to development. Rebuilding the country and revitalizing the economy were tasks left to the UN Development Program, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Since these agencies and funds worked slowly, the UN mission took the blame for leaving little tangible behind. The economic side of what Gusmão had called the “Cambodia trauma” was in fact being repeated in Timor.
Vieira de Mello fought with New York over taxation policy. In March 2001 he wrote to Headquarters, describing his “Solomon’s dilemma.” On the one hand, under UN rules UN staff and UN contractors could not be taxed locally. On the other hand, as the head of a government, he needed tax revenue and was sending a bad signal to the Timorese by exempting the richest people on the island from taxes. He argued the case from the Timorese perspective. If the UN paid workers extra to make up the difference in taxes, the added toll on the UN budget would be minor, while the infusion of such revenue into the Timorese budget would make a significant difference.
18
But he was again informed that the rules could not be altered.
18
But he was again informed that the rules could not be altered.
Although he knew that the rules were the rules, he urged the Secretariat to try to see if the countries in the UN could be persuaded to change them. “What we spend on spare parts for our vehicles, for example, is the same amount as East Timor is able to spend on justice,” he wrote to Headquarters. “We spend on helicopter charters three times what is foreseen in the national budget for education.” He proposed that at a minimum after independence UN member states agree to allow UNTAET to hand over used UN assets to the East Timorese government.
19
Lacking even basic infrastructure and equipment, the Timorese welcomed hand-me-down UN vehicles, generators, computers, and other hardware. After a long struggle Vieira de Mello succeeded in getting permission to donate 11 percent of UN assets—about $8 million worth of equipment—to the new government of East Timor.
20
By claiming that East Timor’s ravaged roads were damaging UN vehicles, he also managed to get a portion of his budget used for road repair—a major victory.
19
Lacking even basic infrastructure and equipment, the Timorese welcomed hand-me-down UN vehicles, generators, computers, and other hardware. After a long struggle Vieira de Mello succeeded in getting permission to donate 11 percent of UN assets—about $8 million worth of equipment—to the new government of East Timor.
20
By claiming that East Timor’s ravaged roads were damaging UN vehicles, he also managed to get a portion of his budget used for road repair—a major victory.
The press had little knowledge of his internal struggles and started to make him a target of their attacks.
Tempo,
an Indonesian weekly, published an exposé on the discrepancies between international staff (who earned an average of $7,800 per month) and local staff (who earned only $240). The article inaccurately described Vieira de Mello as the “flamboyant father of three” and as “one of the most diligent partygoers” in Dili. Living off a salary of $15,000 per month, he was said to host “lavish parties teeming with wine and food.” Although most of the facts (apart from his salary) were false, the article stung him, as its core observations—for example, the UN spent more on dental care for its peacekeepers ($7 million) than it did on local staff salaries ($5.5 million)—hit home.
21
Tempo,
an Indonesian weekly, published an exposé on the discrepancies between international staff (who earned an average of $7,800 per month) and local staff (who earned only $240). The article inaccurately described Vieira de Mello as the “flamboyant father of three” and as “one of the most diligent partygoers” in Dili. Living off a salary of $15,000 per month, he was said to host “lavish parties teeming with wine and food.” Although most of the facts (apart from his salary) were false, the article stung him, as its core observations—for example, the UN spent more on dental care for its peacekeepers ($7 million) than it did on local staff salaries ($5.5 million)—hit home.
21
Since he was the effective governor of the place, any criticisms of the UN mission were in effect criticisms of his leadership. In early 2001 the Brazilian daily
O Globo
quoted extensively from a letter sent by an anonymous female Brazilian Catholic missionary, referred to only as “A.M.” A.M. had described UNTAET as a “job bank for foreigners” who acted like “‘pharaohs,’ arrogant and authoritarian.” UN officials drove air-conditioned SUVs, while the Timorese crowded onto trucks filled with “roosters, pigs, goat kids, bags of rice, vomit, and suffocating heat.” The majority of UN officials treated the Timorese as “monkeys,”A.M. wrote. “They do not come to serve.They come to command and to be served.”
22
O Globo
quoted extensively from a letter sent by an anonymous female Brazilian Catholic missionary, referred to only as “A.M.” A.M. had described UNTAET as a “job bank for foreigners” who acted like “‘pharaohs,’ arrogant and authoritarian.” UN officials drove air-conditioned SUVs, while the Timorese crowded onto trucks filled with “roosters, pigs, goat kids, bags of rice, vomit, and suffocating heat.” The majority of UN officials treated the Timorese as “monkeys,”A.M. wrote. “They do not come to serve.They come to command and to be served.”
22
Vieira de Mello stewed over the article for a month, then erupted in writing, denouncing the author. He wrote:
I am, proudly, a career functionary of the UN, ever since I left university 31 years ago. I served—or, according to your informer, I spent delightful holidays—in tourist paradises such as Bangladesh, Sudan, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru, Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and, since November 1999, East Timor . . . I left my position in New York and I came to Dili because I believed in the cause of this suffering people. I accept—in fact, I stimulate—constructive criticism, but I do not allow gratuitous attacks such as yours . . .
It was the UN that kept ablaze the flame of the right to self-determination since Indonesia’s invasion of Timor in December 1975. It was our Secretary-General who mediated the agreement of May 5, 1999, that made possible the referendum of August 30, 1999, in which more than 78 percent of the population chose independence. I lead, with humility, this mission, and I take responsibility for all of its errors. We had to improvise and, with scarce resources, to create a government in an environment of desolation . . .
We share the frustration of the people with the slow execution of these projects. If destroying is easy—it took a few days here—constructing a new public administration and civil service takes time. I did not learn to make miracles, and one of the reasons for the delay is the control mechanisms, whose objective is precisely to prevent that which your source affirms to be the norm: corruption . . .
The headline of your article was “White Intervention in East Timor.” Intervention, yes! White? There are more Asian, African and Arab people than Europeans in this mission . . . I haven’t served the UN for more than three decades to swallow gratuitous effrontery from anybody. To the readers of
O Globo
I excuse myself for the tone of this reply. It is easy to assail when one does not have knowledge of the facts.
23
O Globo
I excuse myself for the tone of this reply. It is easy to assail when one does not have knowledge of the facts.
23
The one fight Vieira de Mello refused to lose with Headquarters was that over securing compensation for families of sixteen UN employees killed during the 1999 referendum. When New York requested their marriage, birth, and death certificates, as well as written proof of employment, he patiently explained by cable that East Timor presented a “very unique case” where all documentation had been destroyed and the UN would have to be flexible and accept witness statements vouching for a staff member’s employment and death. “I am sure you will agree that we have a moral obligation to staff members who died in their line of duty,” he wrote,“particularly since rampaging militias specifically targeted local staff.”
24
24
In March 2001 Jean-Marie Guéhenno, head of the Department of Peace-keeping Operations, wrote to Vieira de Mello expressing regret that “our hands are tied.” Despite the unusual circumstances surrounding the deaths and the compensation claims, Guéhenno wrote, the department was unable to get the standard requirements waived. More than two decades after he had battled New York for compensation for a Lebanese doctor killed by peacekeepers, Vieira de Mello argued that the UN needed to overhaul its entire approach. “In my long association with UN peacekeeping operations, the issue of the UN’s incredibly late payment of compensation to nationals of our host countries [has] always been a source of embarrassment to the Organization,” he wrote. “Victims’ families are usually very poor, and it is difficult for them to understand how the UN, which is perceived to be wealthy, could not pay compensation within a reasonable amount of time.” He informed Guéhenno that he intended to go ahead and “grant a one time lump sum payment of $10,000” to each family. Knowing how to force a response, he advised: “If I do not hear from you by 19 July, I shall direct the Director of Administration to disburse these funds immediately.”
25
This cable got New York’s attention, and Vieira de Mello’s multiyear campaign finally bore fruit. Guéhenno informed him that he had finally persuaded UN administrators to allow the Timorese families to be compensated beginning on August 1, 2001.
26
25
This cable got New York’s attention, and Vieira de Mello’s multiyear campaign finally bore fruit. Guéhenno informed him that he had finally persuaded UN administrators to allow the Timorese families to be compensated beginning on August 1, 2001.
26
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