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Chinese Foreign Minister Greets East Timor's Election
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan on Friday extended greetings to UN chief Koffi Annan and East Timor's interim government on Thursday's successful parliamentary elections in the UN-administered Southeast Asian territory.
In separate messages to Annan and East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, Tang expressed appreciation for the role the UN and the interim government played in ensuring the successful election of the territory's first constituent assembly.
Tang also expressed his belief that the voting will enhance peace and stability in East Timor, strengthen unity of the East Timorese, and lay a solid foundation for an independent, peaceful, stable and prosperous East Timor.
China is willing to work together with the U.N. and East Timor' s interim cabinet to help the land achieve full independence and develop its national economy, he said.
East Timor will have an 88-seat constituent assembly after Thursday's election, paving the way for its independence slated for 2002.
Vote counting has begun Friday in the East Timorese capital of Dili under the auspices of the U.N. Transitional Authority, and the results will be handed in to the head of the U.N. body on September 10 before they are made public.
East Timor has been under U.N. administration since 1999 when an overwhelming majority of the East Timorese voted to break away from Indonesia, which annexed the former Portuguese colony in the 1970s.
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