ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 TAG: 9612110028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: OSLO, NORWAY
SOURCE: Associated Press
A Roman Catholic bishop and an exiled activist who oppose Indonesia's occupation of East Timor accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Tuesday and praised the committee for bringing attention to the 21-year-old ``forgotten conflict.''
Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, 48, and Jose Ramos Horta, 51, shared the honor in a ceremony that was boycotted by Indonesian representatives.
Ramos Horta offered his ``deepest appreciation'' to the committee members for ``your generosity in thinking of the wretched of the Earth and your courage in standing up to the might of states.''
Indonesian troops seized East Timor in 1975, and forcibly annexed it the next year. In announcing the Peace Prize on Oct.11, the Nobel committee blamed Indonesia for widespread death, terror and persecution during its occupation of the former Portuguese colony of 720,000 people.
Indonesia says it invaded East Timor to prevent chaos after Portuguese forces abandoned the island during a civil war.
The government has denounced Ramos Horta, a former leftist guerrilla, as a traitor, and accused him of ``unspeakable atrocities.'' The government has avoided criticizing Belo, but has complained that he was abusing his position by making political comments.
On Tuesday, Indonesia denied it had warned Bishop Belo not to criticize the government when accepting the Nobel Prize. Speaking in Indonesia, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas said Belo's appeal for talks were appropriate to his role as a spiritual leader.
Both laureates urged Indonesia to release political prisoners, and open talks on the future of East Timor.
``I say stop bloodshed. And I add, stop oppression. Stop violence. Stop conflict. Let us sit down around a table and understand each other,'' said Belo, clad in black and magenta clerical robes.
``I firmly believe that I am here essentially as the voice of the voiceless people of East Timor,'' he said. ``And what the people want is peace. An end to violence and the respect for their human rights.''
Ramos Horta called Belo ``the real winner'' of the prize as ``the embodiment of the East Timorese people's resilience, moral rectitude, dignity and identity and its long quest for peace and freedom.''
Each Nobel Prize carries a $1.12 million cash award. The other prizes were presented in Stockholm, Sweden, on Tuesday - the 100th anniversary of the death of the prizes' benefactor, Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite.
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, celebrated for her ``beautiful, deep and subtle poetry,'' accepted the Nobel Prize in literature.
David Lee and Robert Richardson, both of Cornell University, and Douglas Osheroff of Stanford University, shared the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.
Peter Doherty, an Australian now working in Memphis, Tenn., and Rolf Zinkernagel of Switzerland received the prize in medicine for pioneering work on the body's immune system.
Harold Kroto of Britain's University of Sussex and Richard Smalley and Robert Curl of Houston's Rice University shared the chemistry prize for discovering carbon atoms bound in the shape of soccer balls.
The economics prize was awarded to James Mirrlees of Cambridge University and William Vickrey of Columbia University, for their work in ``asymmetric information'' - transactions in which one party knows things the other doesn't.
Vickrey died days after the prize was announced in October and his medal was accepted on his behalf by a friend, Lowell Harris.
While Ramos Horta lives in exile in Australia, Belo has stayed in East Timor, condemning violence, advocating peaceful solutions and protecting his parishioners from Indonesian attacks.
In accepting his prize, Belo recalled another clergyman, Martin Luther King Jr., whose nonviolent struggle for civil rights was honored with the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.
King's words, ```standing on the mountaintop, looking out at the promised land,''' Belo said, ``remind me of the view of the majestic mountains in my beloved East Timor.''
``As I look at these mountains,'' Belo said, ``I feel ever more strongly that it is high time that the guns are silenced in East Timor once and forever.''
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB