East Timor "Nation State" : Ethnicity and international Relations

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Totally seven-workshops were held during the last year. At the last meeting we overviewed the outcome of the project studies and also discussed about the outlook for the future activities and research, particularly the application for the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research for the year of H.17 and 18.After three years from the independence, the Democratic Republic of East Timor is still in the process of decolonization in all aspects including politics, economy and culture. The major problem is economic development, the basis of decolonization ; however, East Timor has been struggling with great difficulties in searching for the way to progress. With such difficult condition East Timor's leaders have indicated their great expectation towards developed countries, especially Japan. We analyzed the bilateral (Japan-East Timor) relationship concerning the visit of President Gusmao to Japan last winter. The interesting point we found is that East Timor's leaders make a point of Economic relationship with Japan and have controlled public criticisms towards Japan, which was resulted from the problem of wartime past even though there has been demand for "compensation" in public. Regarding East Timor's relationship with Indonesia, after analyzing the official documents of two countries we concluded that East Timor has been taking diplomacy on the line of "reconciliation." Concerning national "integration", as we have predicted, the problem of "ethnicity" related to language and religion came to emerge clearly as clan for"independence" faded away. This issue has to be continuously analyzed with the observation and examination of various facts in detail.