Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Jose Ramos-Horta.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 30, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 093001np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Interview with Jose Ramos-Horta
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:06

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: On today's FRESH AIR, we meet a leader of East Timor's independence movement, Jose Ramos-Horta. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. He's lived in exile ever since 1975, when Indonesia invaded and annexed his country. We'll talk about his childhood in East Timor and his many years in exile trying to alert people to a crisis in a small country that most Americans have never even heard of.

Then we'll talk with former president Jimmy Carter about the Carter Center's delegation which monitored the recent vote on independence in East Timor.

That's all coming up on FRESH AIR.

First the news.

(NEWS BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The Nobel committee has begun announcing this year's winners. My guest, Jose Ramos-Horta, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his work leading the East Timor independence movement. He shared the prize with East Timor Bishop Carlos Belo. They were cited for their sustained and self-sacrificing contributions for a small but oppressed people.

Ramos-Horta was born in 1949 in Dili, the capital of East Timor, and has lived in exile since 1975, when Indonesia invaded and annexed his country. The people of East Timor voted for independence in a referendum on August 30th. After the vote, pro-Indonesian soldiers and militias went on a rampage of burning, looting and killing. A multi-national peacekeeping force has moved in. The U.N. is planning to run a transitional administration for the next couple of years.

Now that independence appears to be imminent, Ramos-Horta is planning to return to his country. I spoke with him this morning from Washington, D.C.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

Until 1975, while you were growing up, East Timor was a colony of Portugal. Your father was a Portuguese exile. I believe he fled the country after taking Portuguese naval ships to Spain to fight against Franco. What were your feelings about Portugal while you were growing up?

JOSE RAMOS-HORTA, EAST TIMOR RESISTANCE LEADER: Well, because of Portuguese colonial education system -- I never been to Portugal. I was born, grew up in East Timor, and in remote village and rural areas. There was no major city in East Timor, to speak of. And so my notions of the rest of the world were extremely limited, limited by the remoteness, geographic remoteness of East Timor in relation to the rest of the world.

And our education system was largely influenced by the Portuguese official propaganda of that time. We were led to believe by the school textbooks, the school propaganda, that Portugal was the greatest power in the world -- that, as a child, obviously.

But much later in life, obviously, we realized that it was all myth, falsehoods. The dictatorship in Portugal was the most backward in Europe. It was obviously not -- cannot be compared with Mussolini in Italy, but philosophically, ideologically, it was like Mussolini's Italy.

My father was part of the generation in the navy who were more progressive, leftist, and he and many others, they tried to go to Spain, take the warships to join with the Republicans in the fight against France dictatorship in 1936. The attempt failed, and he was arrested and deported to East Timor. That's why I was born of a Portuguese father and an East Timorese mother. So I come from a very mixed ethnic cultural background.

GROSS: Oh, I didn't realize he was deported to East Timor.

RAMOS-HORTA: Oh, yes. That East Timor was at the time a penal colony, essentially. No white person lived there on his or her own will. Very few. And those who were there, the very few who were there were political dissidents who oppose the fascist dictatorship in Portugal.

GROSS: Watching your father live the life of an exile, did you ever think that you'd be an exile yourself some day?

RAMOS-HORTA: No. It never occurred to me. I would not pretend that at those early years as a teenager I had already a vision, an idea of what my life would be. I was happy to be in the island, but then as I grew up, my sense of justice also was strengthened. And slowly, gradually, I began to write, to speak out, and ended up first in exile in Mozambique in 1970, because of my criticism of the Portuguese colonial rule.

But I also must say, you know, the Portuguese colonial rule in East Timor is absolutely nothing comparable with its colonial rule in Mozambique, and absolute nothing comparable with other colonial experiences. In East Timor, the Portuguese colonial rule was the most benign. Maybe you could say benign neglect. There was no violence, really. There was some discrimination. But by and large, the island was relatively peaceful, or very peaceful. There were harmonious relationship between the various ethnic communities there.

The major problem was the neglect and poverty, but maybe, in a way, the colonial power neglect the country, it might be a blessing in disguise. It means that they do not interfere with native culture, the day-to-day lives of the people who lived in the mountains. Ninety percent of the people lived in rural areas and had never seen a white face.

GROSS: My guest is Jose Ramos-Horta. He's one of the leaders of the East Timor independence movement. He's lived in exile since 1975, the year of the Indonesian invasion. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

How old were you when the Portuguese pulled out of East Timor, which until then had been their colony? And what are some of your memories of what happened immediately after the Portuguese left?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, I was there until three days before the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia. Indonesian armed forces invaded territory on December 7, 1975. I left in a light aircraft on December 4th to Australia, and then on to Europe and the United States.

My feeling then were one of betrayal, abandonment by Portugal and by everybody else. I was 25 years old, had had no experience whatsoever in international politics, had never been to any major city anywhere in the world. And yet I was the one who was supposed to be in charge of our international relations, in charge of mobilizing international opinion, support for our struggle.

Well, I never felt more lonely in my life, and I could see the country. You know, you look at the horizon, the seas around you, and the quietness of the city because most people have gone to the mountains. I had a sense of the isolation, both geographic and a political isolation. And if ever I felt more lonely in my life was in those years.

GROSS: How long after Portugal pulled out of East Timor did it take before Indonesia invaded?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, the Portuguese pulled out temporarily in August, '75, during -- in the midst of civil war, a stupid civil war fought by two irresponsible East Timorese groups, the Fratelin (ph), to which I belonged. But I had no part in the stupidity and the irresponsibility of the hard-liners that monopolized -- had a monopoly on decision-making in the Fratelin. And the other group, Timorese Democratic Union, more conservative, made up mostly of people equally not terribly bright, intelligent, mature.

So because of the immaturity, inexperience, irresponsibility of the two sides, in August, '75, the two sides plunged the country in a civil war. It was brief, though intense. It lasted only two, three weeks. Soon the two stupid sides ran out of ammunition. The civil war ended. Then Fratelin won that civil war. The other side was defeated, fled. And the Fratelin ruled the territory for three months before Indonesia actually invaded. Portugal actually left only on the day of the invasion.

So there is a myth, misinformation that went on for years and years saying that Portugal abandoned. Well, I think the East Timorese side, both Fratelin and UDT (ph) -- I hope that we would be humble enough to say that it was our own stupidity and irresponsibility that plunged the country into civil war. Portugal was caught in the midst of the civil war.

Fortunately, I was not in the country at the time. I had no part in civil war. I was out of the country. I was stuck in Australia. I returned early in September, when the civil war had ended, with the first party of journalists to enter the territory after the civil war.

GROSS: Now, you've called both sides in the East Timor civil war from the mid-'70s stupid. I believe you've never been involved in armed resistance. Are you philosophically opposed to armed resistance.

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, I'm philosophically opposed to any form of violence. I do not believe that one can find any intellectual, political, moral, philosophical justification for violence, as such.

But having said that, I do not rule out the use of force when a people is subjected to the threat of genocide. Then it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene -- with force, if necessary -- to prevent that genocide. Not intervening, not using force to prevent a genocide make us accomplices.

GROSS: My guest is Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, a long-time leader of East Timor's independence movement.

We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

(ID BREAK)

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: My guest is Jose Ramos-Horta. He's a long-time leader of the East Timor independence movement. He's lived in exile since 1975, the year of the Indonesian invasion. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

Days before Indonesia invaded, you had left the country, representing East Timor in its international relations. Your family, though, remained in East Timor. What happened to your parents? And I believe you had 11 brothers and sisters at the time.

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, my father had died four years earlier of natural causes. My mother stayed behind with all my brothers and sisters. Most of them fled to the mountains. And tragically, in the course of the next two years -- the first to die was a sister. She was then 20 or 21. She was killed during an Indonesian air bombing, along with many other children, teenagers, in the mountains. We know where she is buried, somewhere in East Timor. At least we know where she was buried.

But then two other brothers died, were killed, and we even don't know exactly where they were buried, where they died. And as soon we will go back to East Timor, I will go back -- East Timor is almost free now -- and we want -- and if we want to provide them with a decent religious burial, we will not be able to because we don't know where they are.

And that happened with thousands of other East Timorese who will not be able to locate their loved ones, where they died, to give them a decent burial. And this is happening today. It's happened in the last few weeks, when thousands of East Timorese were abducted, dumped into the seas. Some people were killed and dumped into mass graves. Many were chopped into pieces, unrecognizable.

And another brother died mysteriously in a hospital in Timor in '92. He was taken to hospital and died three days later. A year earlier, he had written to me saying that if he ever got sick, he would never go to an Indonesian hospital. He said "They will kill me." Well, they did.

A year later, he was hospitalized for a minor problem, and either they poisoned him to death or they allowed him to die, as it happened to so many other people, many other East Timorese who'd gone to hospital and who were poisoned by Indonesian doctors, by Indonesian nurses.

One thing that is not very well known outside East Timor is that many Indonesian doctors and nurses, a bit like Nazi Germany, they became accomplices in the killing of East Timorese. Children were poisoned to death in hospitals, adults. Many people who were collaborating with the resistance or suspected of collaboration with the resistance were poisoned to death in different circumstances.

GROSS: Was returning to East Timor after the Indonesian invasion out of the question for you? And did you think you could be more effective for your country working on the outside?

RAMOS-HORTA: Yes, certainly. What would I do in East Timor if I went back after the invasion? I don't carry a gun. I'm not a fighter. You know, I would be just a burden to those in the mountains. So being outside, I was one of the few lonely voices at the time, '75 on. We didn't have too many supporters around the world. The issue was largely forgotten. Most people were ignorant about it. If we could get a line in "The New York Times," we were all very excited about it.

So it was very, very difficult, lonely years, but I kept doing it because someone -- an inner voice was telling me to persevere, to continue because I owe it to those in the mountains, in the jungles, in the cities of East Timor.

GROSS: You know, I find it really interesting that one of East Timor's most powerful and influential voices, you, were the son of a father who was deported to East Timor. I mean, he was sent there as if it were a penal colony. And you were devoting your life to -- you know, to defending the country. I think a lot of people might have thought "This is" -- you know, "This is the place my father was deported to. I'm happy to get out."

RAMOS-HORTA: No. I was born in East Timor. My mother is from East Timor. My brothers, sisters, everybody born in East Timor. I had never been outside the country before. Well, you know, the island has an extraordinary spiritual pull. It pulls you. That's what everybody feels, anyone who once visit the territory. And I know many people -- Australians, Portuguese, anyone who ever set foot in East Timor feel totally converted to the island. And that's what has been the experience of many people I know.

So particularly in my case, obviously, having been born there, growing up there, with all my relations from there, so it was simply a moral obligation.

GROSS: Well, you know, in your mid-20s, you were living in exile, and you were, like, in charge of international relations for your country when you left. And then you became a leader of the peace movement abroad. First of all, most people in the United States had never heard of East Timor, and it's very hard to convince somebody to be interested in place that they don't even know existed. You were also in your mid-20s, and I think it's hard in the world of international relations for someone in their mid-20s to be taken seriously, especially if they don't have a gun in their hands.

So I'm wondering about some of the things you were up against, trying to get the United States and other -- you know, and leaders from other parts of the world to take notice of what was happening in your country. And was it hard for you, as a man in his mid-20s, to be taken seriously in the world of international leaders?

RAMOS-HORTA: Yes, certainly. I don't know whether because I was in my mid-20s or because the powers that be had no interest. Indonesia was and is one of the largest countries in the world, the fourth largest, at the time ruled by a powerful anti-communist crusader, dictator, General Suharto, with abundant natural resources. Everyone wanted to invest and make money out of Indonesia resources. We were in the midst of the post-Vietnam syndrome, the cold war. So who would want to listen to an unknown entity from a little country? So everything militated against us.

But I was always driven, inspired by my obligation to the people of East Timor, my commitment to justice no matter where it is. Over the years, I was always concerned about other situations around the world. I was not obsessively focused on East Timor, although that was my priority.

But I developed relations with many others, with the Tibetans, with the Burmese, with the people from so many regions of the world, with South Africans, and became friends with so many people from the ANC. I became acquainted with many black Americans, learn about their history, their suffering, their extraordinary determination to succeed and to prevail in the face of enormous odds in this country. So this time in the United States, you know, for me was tremendous learning experience, as well.

GROSS: You won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996. You shared it with Bishop Belo of East Timor. I'm wondering how winning the Nobel Peace Prize for your work fighting for East Timor's independence affected the visibility of the struggle. Did it call more attention to East Timor and help you?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, certainly, I'm forever grateful to the Nobel committee in Oslo for having the bother -- for having thought about me. It far from my mind ever to think about a Nobel Peace Prize. Someone nominated me, and a group of people in Oslo decided I deserve it.

And that obviously was -- I took it as a tribute to the people of East Timor. I took it as something that was given to me and it gave me great responsibility to continue the lobby campaign for East Timor. And successfully.

The Nobel Peace Prize turned things around completely, opened doors everywhere, draw media attention. And within a year, the Suharto dictatorship fell. The Indonesian dictatorship fell, and within a few months only the new government began this new policy towards East Timor. So I would say it was the Nobel Peace Prize that turned things around so dramatically.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Jose Ramos-Horta is a leader of the East Timor independence movement. He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR.

I'm Terry Gross, back with Jose Ramos-Horta. He won a 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts leading East Timor's independence movement. He's lived in exile since 1975, when Indonesia invaded and annexed his country.

The current president of Indonesia, President Habibi, recently agreed to the referendum on independence. The East Timorese people voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence, and after that vote, the militias moved in and began massacres and burning and looting and driving people from their homes.

Did you expect that the referendum on independence would be followed by this kind of militia violence?

RAMOS-HORTA: Yes, I did. But let me stop (INAUDIBLE). You know, it is not militia violence. Militia is just a name. The violence was well planned, conceived for long time by the Indonesian army. Most of the so-called militias are in fact Indonesian army soldiers dressed in civilian clothes. Many of the militias are not natives of East Timor, they are recruited from criminal gangs elsewhere in Indonesia.

And yet, the media, you know, propagate the myth about militias here, militias there. The problem with the media arriving in East Timor is that because everybody look alike, an East Timorese is an Indonesian, an Indonesian is East Timorese. Western journalists, they don't bother to see the difference, you know, they don't bother to question -- to ask whether an East Timorese Catholic would ever burn a church, would kill a priest, would kill a nun. No, not in 500 years of our history ever a Catholic church was burned. Never once a nun, a priest was killed. Never once a bishop is disrespected.

Then suddenly churches are attacked, nuns are killed, priests are killed, and the journalists keep talking about militias. Well, are they Timorese, or they are in fact Indonesian soldiers disguised in civilian clothes?

But, you know, we have these stereotype, you know, by Western journalists. You know, they arrive in Timor, or in the region, you know, where all these people all look alike, so they must be all East Timorese.

GROSS: Who controls the Indonesian army? Does President Habibi have control over the army?

RAMOS-HORTA: No, President Habibi, I would say, I would exempt him from responsibility. Unfortunately, he is a weak president. The army doesn't like him, the army hates him, for different reasons. And his relationship with the army was made worse by the fact that he took the challenge in changing policies in regard to East Timor.

East Timor was always an exclusive domain of the army, where they operated with arrogance and impunity, where they had economic and financial interests. But East Timor had become too costly to Indonesia, and the president, as a very pragmatic individual, he decide, it not worth for Indonesia, not worth for Indonesia's future, particularly in this era of democratic reform, that we should hold onto East Timor.

So he say, Let's give the East Timorese a chance to say whether they want to remain with us or not. Of course the army, and the army that has been there since independence of Indonesia 50 years ago, as a law unto itself, unchallenged, that use force against any opposition, certainly did not like. So the army began to organize itself to undermine the policies in East Timor.

GROSS: Multinational peacekeeping forces have arrived in East Timor. Indonesia is expected to endorse the independence vote next month. The U.N. is expected to run a transitional administration in East Timor for two to three years. What do you think is going to happen in the near future in your country?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, first, let me clarify one point, is that under the New York agreement signed between the foreign ministers of Portugal, Indonesia, and the secretary of the United Nations, Indonesia, upon the announcement of the result of the ballot of August 13, and if that result is in favor of independence, Indonesia simply take the constitutional steps necessary to disengage itself completely from East Timor, to surrender sovereignty to the United Nations.

It does not, the New York agreement does not, and I repeat, does not give the Indonesian parliament any power to ratify or to veto. So they simply have to take the necessary formal steps to disengage.

So I hope that's what they will do in the next few weeks or so. If they don't, that is that problem. They're the ones who will have -- will be even more embarrassed. But I hope they do, because otherwise the cost to them will be even greater.

The United Nations, in any case, is already on the ground. We have thousands of, you know, international peacekeeping forces there. In the next few days, weeks, hundreds of U.N. civilian administrators will be moving in and working with us, with the East Timorese resistance, we begin the plan an independent East Timor.

I hope that independence will come about in a year or two.

GROSS: And will you move back to East Timor when the country gets its independence?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, I'm moving back in the next few weeks.

GROSS: Really?

RAMOS-HORTA: Once I complete my tour. I have many engagements around the world, mobilizing support, financial resources. I'll be moving back maybe in two, three weeks, in a month latest, I would go back with the resistance leader Xanana Gusmao, who is in the United States as well. We are traveling right now. And he wants me to go back with him on -- as soon as he's able to return, and that should be in the next few weeks.

GROSS: How does it feel now to have independence imminent, and to be on the verge of returning home after about -- close to 25 years?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, it feels like having -- climbing a very, steep mountain, very tall mountain, that took 20 years to climb, and we are almost reaching the top. That's how I feel, physically, emotionally exhausted. But also with renewed strength to continue still a very difficult task of rebuilding the country, because Indonesia has destroyed the country.

Town by town, house by house, as (INAUDIBLE) troops pull out, they did, like Nazi Germany, in destroying the towns they left in Europe, or like Saddam Hussein forces in Kuwait, blowing up oil fields as they left. They are not leaving behind one single factory. They are not leaving behind one single hospital or school. They blew up everything they could.

GROSS: How do you see your role in the new East Timor? Do you want a role in the government?

RAMOS-HORTA: I hope not. I hope I'll be able to be spared having to be in a government.

GROSS: (laughs) You don't want to be in the government.

RAMOS-HORTA: No, I really don't want. I obviously will serve the country, but I don't think to serve the country, you have to be in government. I can teach, I can be a sort of mediator to help healing the wounds of the war among the Timorese society. We'll work closely with Xanana Gusmao, the resistance leader. But he already told me that he needs me for the next three years to work with him side by side. So I continue to hope only that I don't have to have a formal role in the government.

GROSS: Why do you feel so strongly about not working in the government?

RAMOS-HORTA: Well, frankly, as long as the struggle is a mission, a cause, that is my moral obligation. But once the country is free, although still with a lot of work to be done in the next few years, there are many other people who can do the job. The task will be easier now, in terms (ph) mobilizing international support.

And, you know, I'm not being false modesty, you know, I don't -- I just don't like the hassle of being in the government. I don't like the protocols, the impositions. I don't like to have to entertain everybody, government delegations, ministers, diplomats. I don't want to go to the airport every day to meet delegations, I don't want to take people to lunch, to dinner every day.

GROSS: (laughs) You're making a compelling case.

RAMOS-HORTA: Yes. (laughs)

GROSS: Well, I want to wish you good luck on your return to your country.

RAMOS-HORTA: Thank you.

GROSS: And I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

RAMOS-HORTA: Thank you.

GROSS: Jose Ramos-Horta won a 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts leading the East Timor independence movement.

Coming up, former President Jimmy Carter discusses the Carter Center's delegation, which monitored the vote on East Timor's independence.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Jose Ramos-Horta
High: Jose Ramos-Horta, an exiled East Timorese resistance leader, has denounced Indonesia's actions and defended the rights of East Timorese, as an ambassador to the U.N. and a representative for independence groups, since 1975 when Indonesia invaded and annexed the newly independent East Timor. In 1996, Ramos-Horta shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Bishop Belo from East Timor.
Spec: World Affairs; East Timor; United Nations; Elections; Jose Ramos-Horta

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Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Interview with Jose Ramos-Horta

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 30, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 093002NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Jimmy Carter on the East Timorese Referendum
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:45

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

GROSS: Earlier today, we called former President Jimmy Carter to talk about the Carter Center's work monitoring the situation in East Timor. As part of the center's mission to prevent and resolve conflicts, it monitors elections around the world.

Jimmy Carter monitored the election in Indonesia, which voted the current president, B.J. Habibi, into office. Carter has kept in touch with Habibi about East Timor.

Carter sent a team of delegates to East Timor to monitor the August 30 independence referendum. I asked Jimmy Carter about the importance of sending the delegation.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, the Carter Center had already helped monitor the election for parliament and president in all of Indonesia, and we saw the impending crisis in East Timor. And with the approval of Indonesia's President Habibi, we sent a delegation into East Timor.

Our responsibility was to work alongside the United Nations for the registration of voters, which turned out to be a wonderful event, and also the actual conduct of the referendum on August 30, which also was almost perfect, with almost -- with more than 97 percent voting, and they voted 79 percent for independence.

It was after that that the crisis occurred, I think primarily because the international community didn't pay enough attention to the prospect of violence.

GROSS: What did you say when you called President Habibi of Indonesia after the election, after the violence had started?

CARTER: Well, I talked to him even before the election occurred, when it was obvious to us that intimidation was rampant. And -- but -- and subsequent to that, every time we had a weekly report, which got increasingly despairing, I would send him a written copy of the report even before, or at least simultaneously with, our publication of it.

So my responsibility to Habibi was to keep him informed about how serious the violations of peace were and violations of human rights were in East Timor. I think he was receiving contrary reports from his own people. It's obvious to me, having observed the situation quite at length, that Habibi is a well-meaning person who tried to do what was right in East Timor but had practically no control over his military force, and certainly no control over the ones who happened to be in East Timor.

So I was just one voice among many that were speaking to him about whether it was very serious, which I said, or not very serious, which was the report he was getting from his own people.

GROSS: Did he believe you, or his own people?

CARTER: Well, it's obvious that early in the process, he believed his own people. It was only when mounting visual evidence and a vast number of refugees going into West Timor became unavoidable in his eyesight that he finally realized the seriousness of the problem.

GROSS: What would you like to see the United States do now in East Timor? How much of a role do you think it should play in the multinational peacekeeping force?

CARTER: Well, I think fully supportive as far as intelligence and communication and transportation are concerned. I don't think we need -- we should send in the troops to fight potential battles with the still owned (ph) militia. I think that ought to be a responsibility for the Australians, the New Zealanders, and others from the South Pacific area. And this is a policy that is fully agreed by the Australians and others that I mentioned.

GROSS: In the past few years, there have been so many civil wars and ethnic wars around the world, and you've been monitoring many of those.

CARTER: Yes.

GROSS: And I'm wondering if you feel that we're seeing more savagery around the world, or whether it's just that we're more aware of it.

CARTER: Well, we monitor all of the wars in the world every day, the conflicts that are active, some of them are not -- some of them are dormant now. And we try to intercede when it's appropriate and to encourage others to do so. Sometimes we mediate disputes, sometimes we negotiate ceasefires, sometimes we go places to avoid a crisis, like my wife and I went to North Korea to avoid another Korean War back in 1994. I went with Sam Nunn and Colin Powell down to Haiti when we were threatening an armed invasion with 30,000 troops into Haiti, and to Bosnia, and so forth.

We do things of that kind. But I would say the most sustained effort that the Carter Center maintains is to try to bring democracy and freedom to countries as an alternative to war and a continuation of totalitarian regimes. For instance, earlier this year, we did the election in Nigeria.

GROSS: Do you feel, though, is there more fighting, more civil wars, more ethnic fighting around the world than there's been before, or do you think we're just more aware of it?

CARTER: Well, there is a lot more, and almost all the wars in the world now are civil wars. There are only one or two exceptions. There's a skirmish between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir area, there's a war still going on between Eritrea and Ethiopia. But among the other 70 or so conflicts, they're all civil wars, and they are horrendous in nature. For instance, the war in Sudan, where the Carter Center's deeply involved and has been in the past, over 2 million people have died. And this war's been going on for 16 years.

But if you start on the Red Sea between Eritrea and Ethiopia and go down through Sudan and Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, down through what was Zaire and now is the Republic of Congo, and Congo and Brazzaville, all the way down to Angola, you can go over the entire continent of Africa diagonally from the northeast down to the southwest, and never put a foot on peaceful ground. Every nation is at war.

And that's where we are deeply involved. And these wars are horrendous in nature because they're not bound by the so-called Geneva Conventions, or the normal rules and regulations of a civilized society. And the atrocities take place both by the incumbent regime and also by the revolutionaries who are trying to overthrow or change those regimes.

It is a sad commentary on global peacekeeping, because most of those wars, including the ones I've just mentioned to you, rarely are even recognized as being serious in the United States and in Europe. We are deeply concerned when a few people get killed in Bosnia or in Kosovo, and we sent massive amounts of troops and spend hundreds of millions of dollars. We pay practically no attention to the much more serious conflicts that I just mentioned.

GROSS: I have to say, though, it's so difficult for most of us to even fathom keeping up with 70 different wars.

CARTER: Well, all of them are not serious wars, not -- we call -- The Carter Center categorizes a major war as one within which 1,000 or more soldiers have been killed on the battlefield. And there are only about 30 of those.

The unfortunate thing is that in modern-day warfare, for every soldier killed, nine civilians perish, women, children, older people, totally noncombatant in nature. They're killed by land mines, which are still not outlawed, as you know. They're killed by stray bullets and bombs and missiles, some of which the United States drops. And they also are killed quite often by deliberate deprivation of shelter or food, they starve to death, as a deliberate provocation of the opposing side.

But I think that in many cases a small amount of attention and encouragement for democratic elections, the financing of sustained mediation efforts, those kinds of things will be much more effective than sending in troops.

GROSS: How is it affecting your view of human nature to be so involved in so many different wars around the world?

CARTER: Well, I see both sides of human nature, not only -- you know, I've always -- everybody does that. But the ferocity and horrible abuse of human rights is one aspect, but I also see glimmers of hope.

For instance, it's quite momentous in impact that now Nigeria has a democratically elected government that's eradicating the ravages of long years of despotic totalitarian regimes, and is trying to correct the terrible corruption that destroyed that country.

Liberia had a seven-year war. We helped conduct the election in Liberia a couple of years ago. That was a war that was ended by concerted action of the West African nations themselves, in which the United States and the United States was not involved at all. They're trying now to deal with a war in Sierra Leone.

So I see a lot of signs of local people trying to correct wars among the people who are neighbors to them. But the point is that the United Nations, including the United States, obviously, and France and Great Britain and all, pay very little attention to these, and it's almost impossible, it's very difficult to get even enough money to send a mediating team over there when both sides of a conflict are ready to be -- you know, to find peace.

And I think the arousing of more interest and knowledge about those wars is the first major step that hasn't yet been taken.

GROSS: Are you optimistic about the future of East Timor?

CARTER: Cautiously optimistic. I think we are faced with a long period of international peacekeeping there, which I hope won't be all that expensive. There are less than a million people who live in East Timor, as you know. But it's not going to be an easy thing, because the overwhelming portion of people in the rest of Indonesia, which is the fourth largest nation in the world, fear that the breaking away of East Timor, the independence of East Timor, might be a prelude to those kinds of revolutionary efforts in other parts of the nation.

So I think that there's not going to be a natural self-protective ability of the East Timorese people. I think they're going to have to have some outside force there. And if the political and economic persuasion can be exerted by the international community on the government in Jakarta, it might be the most important single protection for the East Timorese people.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Jimmy Carter.

Tomorrow is his 75th birthday. We'll talk with him tomorrow about turning 75, then feature excerpts of his FRESH AIR interviews.

Coming up, Guenter Grass, who just won the Nobel Prize in literature.

This is FRESH AIR.

(BREAK)

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Jimmy Carter
High: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter discusses his work helping monitor elections in East Timor at the time of the referendum for independence.
Spec: World Affairs; East Timor; Elections; Jimmy Carter

Please note, this is not the final feed of record

Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Jimmy Carter on the East Timorese Referendum

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 30, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 093003NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Interview with Guenter Grass
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

GROSS: Today, Guenter Grass won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Nobel Academy cited his first novel, "The Tin Drum," published in 1959, for ushering in a new era of German literature after decades of linguistic and moral destruction.

We're going to hear an excerpt of an interview I recorded with Grass in 1992. Although he's now staunchly anti-Nazi, he had been a member of Hitler Youth, then fought in the war.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: You were wounded at the end of the war and captured.

GUENTER GRASS, AUTHOR, "THE TIN DRUM": Yes.

GROSS: And then when the war was over, as part of this, like, de-Nazification program, you were forced to see the newly liberated death camp of Dachau.

GRASS: Yes.

GROSS: Can you explain how that happened? I didn't -- I wasn't aware of that, that there was a program in which...

GRASS: Yes, there was this kind of reeducation program, very naive then, and as I told you in the beginning, I always said that's propaganda. And only if -- when we heard on the radio our former Hitler Youth leader speaking out what was really -- what has happened, and all this propaganda lies were washed away, and I started to see clear.

GROSS: What was it like when you saw Dachau?

GRASS: I didn't believe. I saw the camp, it was awful, but I didn't believe what really has happened there, in the beginning.

GROSS: So even seeing it, you didn't believe.

GRASS: Yes.

GROSS: So when you actually heard your youth leader testify at the Nuremberg trials, and you realized, wow, this was really true, did you immediately change? Did you immediately stop believing the propaganda you were taught? Or was that a much slower process?

GRASS: Yes, it was immediately a shock, and -- but it took me more than two or three years, really, to come to the point, and I was reading books about it, and I informed myself. And I had the chance in the western part of Germany to look out for my own way, to find my own -- also political point of view.

If I see people of my generation who did grow up in East Germany, it was much more difficult for them, because they changed and changing the shirts -- the brown shirt of the Nazi youth movement against the blue shirt of the communistic youth movement. There was no time between and no chance for them to find -- to make their own decision.

This is one of the different things we had in East and West Germany. And then after the war, when -- after this prison camp, I was always interested to be an artist, as a sculptor. My first professional training was as a stonemason, and afterwards I entered the art school in Duesseldorf and then in Berlin.

But in all this time, I also started to write, poems, playwrights, and read a lot of books, mixed and wild, was without any program. I had the feeling I have to do very quick, because in the Nazi time we didn't this kind of (INAUDIBLE). It was the end of the '40s and the beginning of the '50s when I first read novels of Hemingway and Faulkner and Kafka and all this forbidden literature. That was very important for me when I was young.

(END AUDIOTAPE)

GROSS: Guenter Grass, recorded in 1992. Today he won the Nobel Prize for literature.

FRESH AIR's interviews and reviews are produced by Naomi Person, Phyllis Meyers (ph), Amy Sallett (ph), and Monique Nazareth, with Ann Marie Boldanado and Patty Leswing (ph).

I'm Terry Gross.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 877-21FRESH
Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia, PA
Guest: Guenter Grass
High: In a 1992 interview, Guenter Grass (who has just won the 1999 Nobel Prize for literature), author of "The Tin Drum," discusses his transformation from Hitler Youth member to anti-Nazi author.
Spec: Nobel Prize; "The Tin Drum"; Movie Industry; World War II

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Interview with Guenter Grass
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.