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So it's my pleasure. Welcome today to bring Back to Life and Oxford one of our visiting fellows from last academic year,

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Ola Offset, who's going to be talking about peacebuilding and conflict analysis mainly in East Timor,

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but also drawing on a couple of other experiences and more generally the efforts of the Peacebuilding Commission.

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But all have had a very interesting career. He's not just a researcher, although that's what he's doing and he spent his time here,

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but he's also more generally a consultant in the field of conflict management and development and humanitarian assistance.

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He's trained as a lawyer and worked as a diplomat at Norwegian embassies and nor at in Pakistan and India,

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also with UNHCR in Bosnia, the Norwegian Refugee Council in Serbia, and with the Red Cross movements in Asia and the Balkans.

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And more recently, he was responsible for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent

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Societies International Disaster Response Law Program in the Asia Pacific.

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And as I say, his focus today is going to be on peacebuilding failures in East Timor,

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where he was head of delegation for the ICRC during the 2006 crisis,

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which is going to talk about, although he's also going to talk about 1999 as well.

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And then perhaps we'll get you to talk about your exciting new assignment the first time at Good.

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So I will turn it over to you to talk about your paper and more generally, and then we'll just open it up to discussion in the time that we have.

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I thank you, Jennifer. Um, I think given the timeframe, it may be a little ambitious to aim for a discussion that includes my Africanews.

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Yes. Yeah, we can. We can see at the end what what time we have.

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But when I realise how little time I have to present East Timor,

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I think I found that I will probably spend all the time doing that we can see afterwards.

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But, but at least I'm starting out with, with East Timor.

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As you may have understood, my interest in conflict management stems from my early life as a legal person,

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as a lawyer, public prosecutor, deputy judge.

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Such positions caught my interest and I took that interest with me when I later sold my law practice and went abroad to do humanitarian work.

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Doing so, I was lucky to have some very interesting experiences in different parts of the world,

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and some of these experiences are going to stay with me forever.

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The East Timor experience is this is one such event.

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Even if I was not directly involved in the peacebuilding process.

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I was in East Timor from October 2003 to May 2006.

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The head of Delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and I was watching

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the process from the sideline not being allowed to get involved because a Red Cross has to be absolutely neutral.

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I was watching tensions and crises coming and going.

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At one stage I evacuated our office because it was getting very tense and these

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things would come and go and normally pass with without serious violence.

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But in 2006, things changed dramatically.

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This spring, a major crisis was developing and no one seemed able to contain it.

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I was watching with horror what was happening and things were simply going out of control.

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And I became very curious as to who's doing what's here.

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How is the U.N. handling this? What tools do they have to handle it?

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How does it look from the inside? So I decided that one day I wanted to go back and try to try to find out about it.

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And that's what I was doing last year during my my fellowship here.

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But so what I'm focusing on, what I have focussed on in this research is the conflict management component of the U.N. operations in East Timor.

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And with that, I mean conflict resolution and reconciliation.

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And I'm looking at the period from 1999 when the U.N. came there until mid 2006.

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But the most important time period in many ways was the early years, the two first years, and then, of course, the year when the crisis happened.

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But question for you, are you all familiar with with the East Timor peace building and the collapse that took place in 2006?

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Some are some background. Yes, everyone is.

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Maybe just a little bird's perspective so that we're all in line to the U.N. peace operations started in 1999,

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when the Timorese decided in a U.N. supported referendum to break loose from Indonesia.

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After 24 years of occupation. Indonesia friendly militia responded with massive violence and destruction.

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And some 1400 people were killed.

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Hundreds of women raped and some 250,000 people fleeing their homes after withdrawal

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of the Indonesian army and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

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The international community decided to make a comprehensive peace and state building effort.

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The U.N. and the World Bank, supported by some 50 international donors, contributed roughly 4 billion U.S. dollars to this effort.

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And the effort was for the first time in history, to build a new nation from scratch.

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So this was the UN's challenge.

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The transition period in two years was planned, meaning that East Timor would be independent and take over from May 2002.

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Although the UN stayed longer than foreseen, the operation was widely considered a success for the longest time.

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In 2006, however, as I've indicated, this was after several reductions of the U.N. presence and staff.

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The peace building process collapsed in internal ones.

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The crisis started with a big number of soldiers from the Timorese army going on strike.

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These were mainly from the west of the country and they claimed that they were being discriminated against.

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Next to my disbelief, 591 soldiers, meaning 42% of the entire Timorese army, were simply dismissed.

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Miners followed were army and police were killing each other.

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Were people from the east and people from the West were attacking and killing each other?

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Minimum, at least 32 lives were lost.

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And again, a huge amount of people fled their homes.

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Estimated at least 150,000. So why did this happen?

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Why did this success story all of a sudden turn into such a dramatic failure?

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The UN Independent Inquiry Commission came to assess the causes of this failure,

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stated that the situation can only be fully understood in historical and the historical and cultural context of the country.

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So before we look closer at the UN conflict management,

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let me just take a quick recap or look at the conflict history of East Timor, which I think is important to start with.

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There was probably never a time of peace and stability in East Timor.

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It seems that from the moment different tribes from different parts of Southeast Asia starting developing, that started settling there.

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They were in conflict and the stronger ethnic groups would push the weaker ones

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away from fertile land near the coast towards the more arid mountainous area,

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meaning also eastwards. So they had conflicts of that kind from a very early stage.

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Then came the Portuguese to the island in 15, in 15, 13.

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Then after some time they started colonising the area, doing so.

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They used these differences between the different ethnic group to split and rule.

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And according to one of the anthropologists who have spent time studying this policy success,

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they virtually split the island into east and west with made the part the capital

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Dili and monitored to us what you call a brokerage area between the two parts.

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During the Portuguese era there were virtual wars where the Portuguese would engage huge amount of Timorese to fight their countrymen,

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to call them land, and to crack down on on freedom initiatives.

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And in some locations, several thousand lives were lost.

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So it was quite dramatically dramatic and obviously deepening the the divide among the people of East Timor.

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Then if you if we move a little further ahead and get to the Second World War, we get another element of divide.

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The Second World War was quite dramatic for East Timor population.

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Some 40,000 people were killed. Many of them fought alongside the Australians who were in the island, in the island.

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But some live rice or small kingdoms also sided with the Japanese.

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So you had another version of the split where part of the population sided with the foreign power.

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Then if we move one step further, in 1975, the scene was again set for dramatic events.

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We had had the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which seemed to open up for possible freedom to East Timor.

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We saw the establishment of the first political parties and one of them nudity staged a coup.

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Immediately afterwards, another party, left wing SD, staged a counter coup.

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You had what was called a civil war with some 3000 people killed.

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It lasted only roughly three months. But as the tea, who later took the name Fretilin prevailed and they declared independence.

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The response from the others, meaning all the other political parties had been established and I think there were four others.

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The response was to go to Indonesia and proclaim integration within with Indonesia.

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And what did Indonesia do? They have their own designs and moved in and occupied East Timor.

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And this was in 1975, and this was the beginning of the 24 years of freedom struggle for the people of the island.

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During these 24 years, there were atrocities on both sides, lots of lives lost, but there were also conflicts between the Timorese.

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Many Timorese sided all the time with the Indonesians despite atrocities, despite suppression, despite comprehensive loss of life.

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And there were internal political conflicts among the Timorese.

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Some of them seem to exist still today. There were also violent conflict inside the freedom movement.

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But some states, it seems that I think there were some 200 people that were killed.

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Many also were tortured members of Fretilin, including their leader.

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And so it was it was a and another illustration, but that we were not talking about a united people.

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We were talking about a people in conflict with another outside power player, but also a conflict with itself together the Civil War of 75,

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the 24 years of freedom struggle, and the 1999 event caused some roughly 100,000 lives.

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And in my view, clearly rendering East Timor a divided, a deeply divided and traumatised society.

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Contributing to the divide was also very a special feature of East Timor, which was about the martial arts groups.

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The marginalised groups was a phenomenon that had existed for many decades.

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But they came to play a an active role in the events in 1999 as sorry, in 2006 and.

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Up till then, they were known for their gang wars, burning houses,

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attacking villages and creating havoc that would would influence the whole society where they were operating.

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One study says that as much as as many as possibly 70% of Timorese men were at some stage affiliated with one of the most large groups.

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So it was a major factor in the in the conflict landscape.

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So this was a brief history, a brief conflict history.

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And this this was, you can say, the backdrop.

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When the UN came there in 1999, they faced a traumatised and deeply divided people and a very complex conflict landscape.

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So how was this handled? When I was due to study this, I found that four different aspects seemed interesting to look into the first the mandates.

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What for the UN mandates in terms of conflict management?

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What plans did they have for conflict management? What conflict analysis did they have?

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And what what practical, practical conflict management activities did they conduct?

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So these were the four elements I was looking into. I also did a comparison with two later U.N. operations in Africa to see how things

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changed after the introduction of the new peacebuilding U.N. structure of 2006.

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But like I said, I doubt that we will have much time to discuss that here today.

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But the mandate, the first U.N. mission was in on it, that their role was to hold the referendum period so we can pass that one.

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Then it was the mission that would take care of the important transition period up to

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the time when the Timorese would take over an entire it had a comprehensive mandate,

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including security, law and order, establishment of administration,

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development of civil and social services, coordination, delivery of humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation and development assistance,

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capacity building for self-government, the establishment of conditions for sustainable government.

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So it was a lot. But as you will have noted, there was nothing in it on conflict management, nothing on conflict resolution or reconciliation.

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Let me say that which followed and tied in when East Timor became independent in 2002

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had reduced staff and the mandate limited to assistance the court administrative,

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administrative structure and the provision of law enforcement and security.

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Again, nothing on reconciliation, conflict resolution.

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Then after then we set in 2005, came up with further used staff and military personnel, only meant for the operations own security.

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Its mandate were to support critical state institutions, provide human rights training and monitor the progress.

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And again, no mentioning of reconciliation or conflict resolution.

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Then the next mission was for finished, which was appointed after the disaster in 2006.

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And then the mandate changes.

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The opening term reads to support the government in consolidating stability, enhancing a culture of democratic governance,

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and facilitating political dialogue among Timorese stakeholders in their efforts to

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bring about a process of national reconciliation and to foster social cohesion.

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So we have said that this came about only after the disaster had happened in 2006.

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It is hard to say whether it had any practical implication that it wasn't mentioned

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earlier as some important conflict management activities were conducted.

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But my point here is that the need for reconciliation was clearly there just as much in 1999 as it was in 2006.

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And if the wording of U.N. mandates have a meaning, it should, in my opinion, clearly have been included from the start.

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So much for the mandates. If I then turn to the planning, although my focus was conflict management,

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I was very curious to learn about the overall planning of the daunting task of building a new nation from scratch.

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This is because I've been responsible for a lot of development work and plans were always essential to my work.

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And I first saw that this developing a proper plan for these operations would be a demanding, comprehensive task.

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I was very curious to see what they had done. However, it turned out to be difficult to find any such plans.

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After doing all the research, I could run my desk myself.

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I requested help from the library and they tried their best to help me and came back after some time and said, Are you sure there is a plan?

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And I was smiling overwhelmingly. And look, here we are talking about building a new country.

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You know, you don't do that without a plan. But I didn't get anywhere even when they contacted the UN Documentation Centre in Geneva.

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Nothing substantive came out of that and we started to become sceptical myself.

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But then I came across one document that seemed to contain a plan, and that was the secretary general's,

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the U.N. Secretary General's report to the Security Council on October the fourth 99, which outlined a number of objectives for insight.

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So I was thinking, Oh, that's my plant. Even if if comic camouflage does a report, some of the objectives, although they were worded as activities,

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actually some of these objectives were definitely relevant to reconciliation and conflict resolution.

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I mentioned to develop mechanisms for dialogue at the national and local levels,

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to undertake confidence building measures and provide support to indigenous processes of reconciliation,

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to create conditions of stability through the maintenance of peace and security,

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including through programs for disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration as may be necessary.

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This document 15 pages thing was quite sketchy on how these conflict management objectives would be reached,

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and it offered nothing on leadership, very different from other aspects of the same planning document and nothing on the capacity.

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But it was at least something I thought. However, my my happiness was short lived, and as I got in touch with a.

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S deep kale head, I was told that sorry, this is no planning document.

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So next question then. What is where is the plan for this operation?

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I turned every stone that I can think of. I got in touch with a lot of people, and I did find that there were other planning efforts taking place,

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like when DeMello and Senator Gusmao met and agreed on the number of priorities.

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There were also an initiative from the U.N. Secretary-General who demanded the development of some benchmarks.

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And according to the U.N. secretary general's briefing to the Security Council on November 28,

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2000, there was a political calendar for the final phase of transition.

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When I came to East Timor to pursue my research, I met, among others, Mari Alkatiri,

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who had been the Prime Minister since the beginning and to the crisis in 2006.

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And he said, Yes, I've seen some kind of a calendar and that was all.

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I I've never seen a proper plan for peace building or state building.

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Eventually, I got in touch with Major General Michael Smith involved in the International Force for East Timor, the early INTERFET,

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who had been doing planning work in New York and later developing the military component of tight in cooperation with de Mello in the field.

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And I got hold of a book that he had written, which I hadn't known about till then,

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which said that Tight was unable to start its mission with a coherent strategic corporate business plan.

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Once deployed in the day to day problems further hindered the development of such a plan.

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I had some email exchange with General Smith.

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And he explained to me that he had even suggested a model for a mission strategic plan,

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but it met with little enthusiasm because there was simply not any capacity in the mission to do this.

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So this means we had a $4 billion state in peace building operation.

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With the humanitarian world jumping up and down, contributing with support and money.

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And there was no overall plan for the first two years.

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It's quite thought provoking.

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But but that has to be a fact.

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Now, what about planning or conflict management, which was my focus, after all, the secretary general's report that mention of October the fourth.

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This, to my understanding, the only planning related document touching upon reconciliation and conflict resolution.

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But since this was no planning document, one has to conclude that there was never any substantial plan for reconciliation and for conflict resolution.

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So what next? No overall plan, no plan for conflict management.

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But I thought surely there must be some conflict analysis providing a basis for conflict management activities.

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To find out about that employed a similar process.

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I turned all the stones that I could think of. But as you might have guessed, there was no comprehensive conflict analysis either.

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There was some internal U.N. reporting that included analysis, but this would be either situational or subject based.

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Nothing comprehensive. So the conclusion was that the U.N. was facing an extremely complex conflict landscape that traumatised

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people who had been fighting with one another in the world since the beginning of human life on the island.

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And there was no analysis of the challenges that this represented.

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What should have been done in terms of analysis.

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My opinion is that these buildings should always be based on mapping of needs, and conflict management is about one such set of needs.

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A look at later efforts by other actors, non-U.S. actors,

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to analyse the conflict landscape in East Timor, provide some ideas, I believe, as to what it takes.

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The report of 2004 from the Colombian university called Timor-Leste the conflict assessment offers a number of valuable insights,

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but it is brief on historical perspectives and only divide in the Timorese population and also on relevant socioeconomic factors.

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This almost simultaneous report from Columbia University and the Norwegian File Film

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Institute provides comprehensive baseline data on socio economic conditions for development,

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but does not establish a link for a connection between these and the conflict equations.

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In 2004, U.S. conducted a conflict assessment with a strikingly accurate prediction of some conflict scenarios.

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But they missed out on ethnic divisions and they term the Timorese as a generally unified people.

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So that support wasn't quite there either.

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Josh Trinidad and Brian Castro presented in 2007 an analysis with relevant demographic factors.

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For instance, the apparent connection between young people moving from rural areas in East Timor to the urban centres,

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and the fact that that's where where the violence mainly took place in 2006.

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And this has to do with statistic evidence that or at least the basis for the

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suggestion that violence is more likely where you have concentration of young people.

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An interesting observation.

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In 2009, James, somebody rendered an incisive analysis of the dynamics of the 2006 conflict, identifying the regional actors and their changing roles.

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That is particularly interesting, I find, including the gangs, the most large groups.

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Paulo Castro, Texas social anthropologist,

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analysed in 2011 a whole range of conflict aspects from the angle of social anthropology, including political conflicts,

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the East-West conflict, the conflict between the Timorese who stayed and the ones who left, and its no linguistic divisions and more.

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It's a quite interesting and incisive document.

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The Timorese NGO settlement, together with Inter Peace from Geneva,

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issued a report in 2009 based on hearings Countrywide, pointing out a number of obstacles to peace,

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spanning from the relationship between modern democracy and the traditions of East Timor to corruptions, impunity and language problems.

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My point by mentioning all of these and others is that is that I believe that if we put them together,

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we begin to understand much better what the conflict landscape of East Timor was about.

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Conflict landscapes in post-modern settings are, in my view, normally too pervasive and too faceted to be analysed by one or two scholars or experts.

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I believe an adequate analysis requires expertise in fields like social anthropology, sociology, social psychology,

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political science, economy, as well as total knowledge of the country's history, culture and traditions.

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I believe a multidisciplinary team is generally needed.

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The U.N., as of today, is not able to provide something like that.

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But my suggestion is that outsourcing to scholars, seasoned practitioners, prominent thinktank members could be a way of addressing this.

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I think the resources are out there. If we start, if we get serious about it,

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can we assume that a sort of multifaceted conflict analysis would have identified the factors that led to the crisis in East Timor?

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I don't think we can say so with absolute certainty,

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but it appears very likely that the union would have been much better equipped for conflict management had they done this exercise.

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Let's take a look at the east west rift in the population.

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I think the analysis provided by senior Darva Castro and Partners takes us where

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they point at stereotypes that they were able to identify in the population.

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This suggests that there were detectable material out there that an analysis should be able to find myself.

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I interviewed a gentleman named Mario Carrasquillo,

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who founded the first political party in East Timor in 1974 and who was the governor of East Timor from 82 to 92.

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And he surprised me by saying that this is an old social phenomenon.

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There were all these differences.

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People in the West were better off because the land is more fertile, they have better income, they are higher education.

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And when they settle in Dili they live in different places.

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So yes, the differences were always the. What more?

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We know that the East-West issue caused a critical divide within the army.

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There was another between the army and the police and also a conflict within the police on the same grounds.

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And these were known conflicts. These were known.

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There was a known fact that these conflicts existed.

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I would say they should have been detectable.

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I would also say that the rift in the population over the relationship with Indonesia was an obvious factor.

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And if you started scratching that surface, you would most likely find the connection with the East West perspective,

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and you would most likely come to identify and understand the perspective.

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This this issue that became so important in 2006.

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I also believe that a profound conflict analysis on the relationship between the various political actors would have been very useful to the UN,

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who, in my opinion, seemed to take too lightly on this aspect.

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I should get back to that. A third critical factor, as I mentioned, was the martial law troops and the gangs and the role they played in 2006.

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If imagining that James Scambos analysis had taken place in 1999 and not in 2007,

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it is my belief that the US would have got a much better understanding of this problem and the threat it represented.

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So home Fitzgibbon.

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Let's turn to what reconciliation, conflict resolution activities that actually took place despite the lack of mandates,

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analysis and planning for the transition period.

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And I did conduct a number of important activities.

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The timeframe prevents me from going into that in detail, but they did a lot.

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On the return of refugees cross border dialogue, civic, educational, constitutional development,

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free flow of information, human rights, dissemination of dialogue with local leaders in care about communal violence.

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There was a range of useful activities. You did also make some efforts to bring political actors together for dialogue.

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But the value like of an indicated wasn't obvious, and I would get back to it.

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But the significant effort was the establishment of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation.

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The CSB on Syria have the combined mandate of investigating reporting on serious crime.

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And facilitating reconciliation between victims and perpetrator of lesser crime.

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See if I was active from February 2002 to October 2005.

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So an interesting question here. That is, to what extent did KBR meet the needs of reconciliation despite a partly vague mandate?

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KBR carried out a variety of reconciliation activities.

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Among them was a series of television broadcast national hearings involving victims and perpetrators, as well as politicians.

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There were healing workshops, community workshops discussing the impact of the conflict.

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There was an outreach program for refugees in the West and an urgent reparation scheme for victims with critical needs.

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If I have forgotten something, I trust Phyllis will set me right after my presentation.

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But in all, I believe Savio's work made a real difference for a big number of people in East Timor.

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Otherwise you end up not even organisations.

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The Bretton Wood institutions all contributed.

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They contributed with institution building, employment for vulnerable groups,

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community development, poverty reduction, infrastructure and entrepreneurship training and more.

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And these efforts might have had an indirect positive effect on reconciliation.

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UNHCR, for its part, was directly involved in the reconciliation process through comprehensive return and reintegration activities.

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However, in my opinion, some reconciliation and conflict resolution efforts were missing.

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Let me first look at the political context. One senior government representative in East Timor said to me,

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the political actors should have got together early on and agreed on one objective, one objective only.

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And I got clear, as it were, what he said national unity.

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That's the main thing missing. National unity. Some efforts were made to induce dialogue between leading political actors.

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But the Timorese leaders I met generally expressed that this was a largely missing element in the entire approach.

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Mari Alkatiri, for his part, claimed that the Untied leadership primarily related to Santino Gusmao,

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that Ramos-Horta and CNRT, the overall resistance organisation, and not to Fretilin, the biggest political party.

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He believed that an initiative like the more bizarre dialogue taken by the Catholic Church in conjunction with President

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Ramos-Horta in 2011 to initiate dialogue between the leaders of CNRT and Fretilin should have been launched early on.

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The need for national reconciliation in Syria was a main program component.

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Community reintegration 1371 perpetrators of minor crime successfully went through a reconciliation and reintegration process.

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However, according to KBR, at least 3000 additional perpetrators who are eligible for this process.

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This means that less than one third of the eligible perpetrators to call them that were covered.

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I guess the pre-screening by a public prosecutor, which was part of the process and submission to the court for endorsement afterwards,

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would be a natural limit to Syria's outreach,

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as would its duty to report serious crime to the prosecutor and stop the process if serious crime was detected.

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I guess this in itself can be an interesting basis for a discussion, but for my context here,

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I would like to observe that these limitations, given serious recommendations in the report of October 2005, became very important.

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So here we are recommended that the work needed to continue to recommended the establishment of a new entity for

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a broad scale reconciliation in the communities and the recommended the pursuit of justice for the victims.

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As far as I have been able to follow developments, none of this happened.

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The reports from Syria, I received little enthusiasm from President Xanana Gusmao,

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whose reaction apparently, apparently had a chilling effect by September 211.

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Two laws of relevance to this subject, including a law on an institute of Memory, supposed to be the entity implementing this year,

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though recommendations were pending in Parliament,

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but facing opposition from parliamentarians but also from veterans who think they should be first in line.

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Serious work started only two and a half years into the entire commission.

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If an early, profound conflict analysis and adequate planning planning had taken place early on,

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CMU might have started working early 2000 instead of 2002 if the needs were properly, properly, properly marked.

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Part of the process might have been the national, large scale,

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community based reconciliation that Kevin Rudd later suggested the possible new entity for broad scale reconciliation.

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My time out of the battle for reaching out to the population at large,

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including Easterners, Westerners, including economists and independents proponents.

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This should, in my opinion, have been a priority in 1999 slash 2000 and not an ignored suggestion suggestion six years later.

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Then a few words of the modern martial art groups. My suggestion is,

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but what should I have tried with a special tried to implement a special large scale program for the large for for the most large groups,

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including reconciliation among them, but also combining it with a structured set top for legal practice on most large sports as it is today.

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As far as I know, this martial art fights are still happening.

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And and it's it's still a fairly wild activity going on.

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So analogous model took an initiative in 2005 and had some I think it was 14 groups signing a

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joint declaration that they would not use violent violence against them amongst themselves,

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although that is a recommended recommendable effort.

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I believe that earlier and much more comprehensive action, a comprehensive action should have been taken to address the most large groups challenge.

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Then if you were to monitor the need for monitoring of conflicts in East Timor

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was essential from the beginning and might have been crucial at a later stage.

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In fairness to the UN operations,

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the two year transition period planned in 99 and the steady reduction of U.N. operations were not the proper basis for assertive monitoring.

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In 2005 and 2006, when the crisis was brewing in 2006.

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Security Council members had long been pressing for a conclusion of the East Timor success story,

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and some Timorese leaders also wished to see the UN leave.

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So for the Azores, due to sit the Timorese leaders down to discuss the crisis would probably have been anything but easy.

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Still, I think one more question.

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The monitoring, one example the conflict between the police and the army was brewing for quite some time before it became a factor in the 2006 crisis.

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The media, unlike the UN, kept reporting on conflicts also within the police.

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The UN operations kept reporting about comprehensive U.N. support towards the development of the police and the army,

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but never indicated any effort to address the conflict between them.

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Not even when Army soldiers detained a number of police officers in January 2004 and attacked a police station in December 2004.

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Was there any U.N. initiative to address this conflict?

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The Secretary-General reported that there is a need to effectively address the strained relationship between the two security forces.

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But if you read the following reports,

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it spoke to technical support and capacity building and nothing about a possible initiative to address this problem.

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And as we know, this problem became critical in 2006.

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In retrospect, one might wish to see.

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The UN tried to agree with the Timorese leader on leaders on how to handle the transition period,

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including a clear joint commitment that if there is a major crisis, we shall sit down together and discuss how we can save the nation.

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But then you would also need an agreement with local leaders on how to do the transition period, and that was not there from the beginning.

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Largely, the understanding is that.

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The Timorese leaders were not participating much in the planning process.

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I mentioned the Manus meeting with Janani Gusmao, but there is little else indicating Timorese political participation.

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But if you were to have such an understanding, you would also need a sensible time frame, not a two year transition period, not one year mandate.

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The time for the UN operations. Some team leaders I spoke to said that if there had been an agreement to begin

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with on a five year transition period and we had agreed on how to do this,

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this could have worked and it could have worked much better.

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I think the U.N. conflict management shortcomings that I have gone through, I should be seen in the light of New York's approach.

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Third quarter, the planning course was given to DP kill, which excluded DP excluded the World Bank and, as I mentioned, the Timorese.

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It is perhaps not obvious that a more inclusive approach would have led to better results,

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but it would have been sound, I think, to draw on all good resources, not making it an internal affair.

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For the sake of balance. We should know that the UN did a comprehensive and in many ways successful job on institution building,

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on security activities that were better defined and better prepared.

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However, to sum up, my belief is that the East Timor operations should have included the following.

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That should have been the Security Council mandate,

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including reconciliation and conflict resolution from the start, not only after the whole thing collapsed in 2006.

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There should have been a more realistic timeframe for the operations, but it should have been a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary conflict analysis.

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There should have been a better planning process for the transition period, including the reconciliation and conflict resolution aspect.

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There should have been clearly defined reconciliation objectives and activities,

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including a national reconciliation program, perhaps along the lines suggested by later by Syria,

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but should have been an early comprehensive dialogue cooperation project for political actors with the purpose of fostering national unity.

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There should have been a national project for marginalised groups, including reconciliation and conflict resolution.

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And if those should I mean, an agreement with local leaders on how to do the transition process,

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including joint robust monitoring and follow up and conference.

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These are my viewpoints. I'm aware that such suggestions vary, are not subject to who research and who writes about them.

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I have seen a lot of suggestions. I shall be happy to discuss mine.

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These were the points I had on East Timor.

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I am happy to discuss what I found in Africa,

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but in its 12:00 and we have half an hour so we can expect an interesting question from what you looked at in Africa.

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As you know, what we can discuss is what, if anything, has addressed some of those comments within the Peacebuilding Commission.

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Thank you so much for the overview of your research and the list of things to to change.

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I had a couple of questions, but I'm going to save them because I'm sure there are others who do as well.