Rebiya Kadeer, an ethnic Uighur from Xinjiang Province, China, is a prominent human rights activist. 

She once was a successful businesswoman and a member of a state council. But her vocal denunciation of violence against Uighurs and the state's repressive policies led to a 8-year jail sentence and, ultimately, exile in the United States. She now acts as "the Uighurs' voice," leading a representative world body and lobbying foreign governments to support them.

The Chinese government accused Kadeer of fomenting the ethnic violence that rocked Xinjiang in July and spurred a heavy-handed government crackdown. In this interview, she discusses relations in the restive region -- and calls on the world to protect the Uighur minority.

Zubayra Shamseden acted as a translator for this interview, which was lightly edited for length and clarity. Excerpts: 

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Foreign Policy: Were you involved in the unrest in Xinjiang? And how do you react to China's insistence that you helped foment the riots?

Rebiya Kadeer: No. I am the voice of these people and I want peace. The [World Uighur Congress] and I have worked since June 26, with 51 organizations around the world, to protest the violence, to go to governments and parliaments and senators around the world to intervene.

I was very disappointed [by the Chinese accusation]. I'm not very happy at all, because they're accusing me [of causing] what happened in Xinjiang, when they should be asking themselves why it took place. Why did those people take to the streets to demand justice?

And even if they [do blame] me for what happened, they should come to me and ask me, "Why did you do it?" Let's come to a dialogue then. Because if they listened to me, I would tell the Chinese authorities: Look, this is what my people want. This is what my people wish to have from you.

Instead of blaming me for everything, [the Chinese authorities] should just stop suppressing and stop killing people. They should stop doing what they've been doing. They should try to listen to the people's pleas.

With their propaganda, they've been able to mislead the international community, to lie. But it's impossible for the Chinese authorities to cheat on the local people, the Uighur people. They wouldn't believe it. They do not believe it. Even the Han Chinese, they do not believe it. The Chinese authorities clearly knew that nobody [believes] that I instigated the incident and that it happened the way it did.

They blame me for using my name, Rebiya, against them. But they use my name, Rebiya, to suppress the people. If it weren't me, they would find somebody else to blame. In the [case] of Tibet, whatever takes place, whatever happens, it's always the Dalai Lama. Always the Dalai Lama. For 50 years, that is what the Chinese authorities have been doing in Tibet. So it is in Xinjiang.

FP: Tell us what we don't hear in the media. What are you most worried about?

RK: The current situation in our country is very grave.

I don't have any proof for some of the incidences I've heard about. Based on unconfirmed sources, we're hearing that the authorities are arresting people every day. Hundreds of people. On a daily basis.

After arresting the people, the Chinese authorities are -- if they agree to work with the Chinese authorities, like as a spy, they will release them. But the rest of them are missing. Nobody knows where they have gone, all the disappeared.

In terms of wounded protesters, wounded Uighur people, they were taken to the second or third local hospitals. Somehow they all disappeared from the local hospital. They took them to the military hospital. And it's just very questionable. Why did they have to transfer them to the military hospital? We suspect some were killed or put in prison. But anything could have happened.

On the streets, we hear that people have been finding bodies [in the gutters]. Also, a television station said there were bodies found in the medical university in Urumqi. There are many of these stories, but they are from unconfirmed sources. [We don't think these were] executions by the military or the police, but Uighurs killed by Han Chinese mobs.  But we don't know. We don't hear about them.

FP: One of the tensions you describe is that many Uighurs -- though not all -- want to have peace with China. But China does not want peace with the Uighurs, so much as it wants to eradicate them.

RK: That is true. The Chinese purposefully instigated the violence in Xinjiang, as well -- even when they were sending troops to stop it. They wanted the Han Chinese and the Uighurs to be violent against each other. There were Chinese security officials in ordinary, plain clothes to create Chinese mobs against the Uighurs. There was no way for the local population to know they were doing it. And you cannot find any information in China about the shootings and the killings of the Uighurs.

What the Chinese authorities say within China is that the Uighurs hate peace. But there were protests where Uighurs were holding Chinese flags, which they never do. They were trying to say: We are your citizens; we are your people. We demand change, but we demand peace.

Uighurs normally don't hold those flags -- because China invaded the region 60 years ago. China said they would give Xinjiang autonomy, but instead, it has been suppressed and they moved millions of Han Chinese to Xinjiang. The autonomous rule was never implemented. This is genocide. They want to destroy the Uighur culture -- they destroyed Kashgar, which had 5,000 years of civilization, of history.

FP: What has happened to you, personally?

RK: I have become the No. 1 enemy of the Chinese authorities because I am the voice of my people. I have been punished. They destroyed my wealth, my businesses. They arrested my children and harassed my family. They forced my children onto television, to lie about my activities. They forced my children from their homes, and then demolished them. They took away our human rights. This is the last shameful thing -- the Chinese authorities are forcing my family from their homes. But where will they go? Just because they are my relatives, no one will offer them a place.

Plus, at the moment, they are demolishing two of my trade centers. At the Rebiya Trade Center, 2,000 merchants work there. It is like a wholesale center for all of East Turkestan. It is the last source of income for many in the region -- it is a ridiculous situation -- it is their last income source. At the back of that trade center is another, named after my daughter. In that center -- my children are living there now. And the authorities are demolishing it as well.

It is a revenge act [against] me.

I have five children and nine grandchildren in East Turkestan. Two of my children are in prison. The situation is very grave. I hope some country on Earth will help them and bring them out. I am amazed sometimes. Why isn't the United Nations or the United States asking why? The authorities are openly suppressing this population. It is a genocide.

FP: Where have you taken your effort to make the plight of the Uighur public? How do you do so?

RK: The United States. It is confident in its support. [The United States] believes it has the authority to save people like mine. But if America would [have intervened] promptly, the situation would be better. Instead, what happened was that the Chinese authorities demonstrated, in China and to the world, what they can do.

Only the rest of the world can save Xinjiang now. I tried, I actually tried inside China, to resolve these issues, but it did not happen. I was imprisoned and had to leave the country. They suppress any [dissent]. Anyone who tried to raise the issue peacefully, about their basic human rights, the Chinese authorities responded with prison, or sometimes the death sentence.

[Recently, I heard] about a group, a delegation, which went to Beijing to talk with authorities about a peaceful resolution. They were arrested.

Now, I have to rally support from democratic countries. We reach out to parliaments, senates, religious organizations, mosques, and human rights organizations. Uighurs rely on the world now. That's the only thing we have. What I do when I visit parliaments and senators and governments is ask that the Uighurs become part of their foreign-policy [agenda].

We reach out to Western governments -- like the United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden. We are also reaching out to the Islamic world now because [China is] restricting the Uighurs in Xinjiang from practicing their religion. The Chinese authorities have told the Islamic world that they have no problem with the exercise of religion. They say that they allow Buddhists, Christians, Muslims. But that is not true.

China is very tactical, and two-sided. To the Islamic world, they say that the Uighurs are separatists and not religious. To the Western world, they say the Uighurs are radicals. To Turkey, they say, "Rebiya works for the CIA." They are very tactical, and they have different versions of this propaganda. They want to make us lonely in the world.

FP: What is your goal? What do you think will happen in Xinjiang?

RK: What do we want? Peace.

It depends not on the Uighurs, but on the Chinese authorities. If they allow self-determination and a dialogue, then it will be resolved peacefully. The Chinese authorities should comply with the United Nations convention on self-determination in Xinjiang.

And we will see how the situation continues. We will see how the Chinese authorities deal with these thousands of innocent prisoners in jail. They must stop arresting, release the innocent, bring back the Uighurs they forcefully removed from East Turkestan. We will see also how they resolve the issues with the Uighur and Han schools.

But they know now: The Uighurs will not stop. We advocated peace, but they continued to suppress us. We here warned the Uighurs in China that they would be suppressed and killed -- but they did not listen. They said, "All we have left is our soul. We have nothing but our soul."

FP: What else should we know? What else should we be thinking about?

RK: I was watching CCTV, a Chinese [state-controlled] television station. I saw a report that said "The United States came into Afghanistan with an army. We will move into Afghanistan with money." Then, there were pictures of Uighur homes burning. It did not say it -- but, this is part of why they want to wipe out the Uighur people. Because only a mountain separates Afghanistan and China. A mountain and Xinjiang province and my people.

It was just a flicker -- just a moment on television. I couldn't tape it. But the State Department should watch it.

China does want, in Afghanistan, business. Gas, and infrastructure. And it does not want violence. Since 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan, there has been much more violence in Xinjiang because [the region is more restive] and because as soon as [U.S. President George W. Bush] moved soldiers into Afghanistan, China started to suppress. Think about why that would take place. To stop violence, and to gain business. That is why they are committing genocide, and that is why they destroyed a 5,000-year-old city.

But the genocide of the Uighurs, it's similar to what happened with the Pharaohs [in ancient Egypt] when they were conquered and the [culture was lost]. It is similar to what happened with them.

Keith Hennessey, a top economic advisor in the Bush administration, had a front-row seat when the global financial crisis first hit. He joined the White House in 2002 and had the dubious luck of becoming director of the National Economic Council in November 2007 -- just in time to watch Lehman Brothers collapse and the United States descend into the worst recession since World War II.

After leaving the White House, Hennessey has used his policy expertise and popular Web site to analyze and criticize Congress and the Obama administration. On July 15, Hennessey joined the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will deliver a report to Congress on the roots of the crisis next year.

In this interview with Foreign Policy's Michael Wilkerson, Hennessey discusses the onset of the economic downturn and his concerns about Obama's economic policies, from stimulus money to reducing carbon emissions. On all fronts, Hennessey says, White House reporters need to ask harder economic questions, and he is happy to supply them. Excerpts:

Foreign Policy: You took over as National Economic Council director in November 2007. Was it already clear at that point that the United States was headed for a serious recession? If so, was the "shot in the arm" stimulus that President George W. Bush put forward too small?

Keith Hennessey: No. I took over at the very end of 2007. At that point the president's advisors thought that we were at risk of a mild recession in 2008 or maybe a slowdown. And in fact that's what we had up through the summer. 2008 was not an economic and financial crisis -- or we didn't feel the full effects of the crisis -- until the events of late summer [or] September. We thought 2008 was going to be a weak year economically but not a crisis year.

At the time ... the size of what President Bush proposed was considered quite large. Because the economy was not in obvious and visible decline at that point, the $150 billion that President Bush proposed was considered quite large compared to what Washington was used to. $150 billion in a year is big.

Now, in retrospect, and now that we've gone through a year and a half of dealing with much more severe problems, it looks relatively small in comparison. But at the time it was not a small package.

FP: What were the other things on the agenda in between getting that first package launched and delivered and dealing with the immense banking crisis in September?

KH: Once the Bear Stearns problem happened in March, the financial crisis dominated economic policymaking from that point to the end of the administration. So you really only had about a month between the enactment of the stimulus in mid-February and the first shock from the financial crisis in mid-March. We really spent from March through the president's last day dealing with the financial crisis and the consequences of it. And related things like the auto situation, which you can argue was closely related to the financial crisis.

FP: There is a perception that reckless bankers in the United States wrecked the global economy. To what extent should the United States be considered responsible for causing the economic downturns elsewhere? Especially because it seems like the U.S. has policy instruments to get out of it that not all of these other countries have.

KH: There are some aspects to the U.S. system that are somewhat unique. A lot of the problems in the underlying financial assets -- in mortgages specifically -- were largely confined to the U.S. But you had banks and large financial institutions around the world that were making the same bad decisions as American bankers. So while there were some aspects that are uniquely American I think that there are a lot of aspects that were global in nature or that were replicated across other countries. Trying to isolate one single cause is probably a mistake.

FP: What worries you about the deployment of current stimulus measures? Is another stimulus required?

KH: The Obama administration put most of [its first stimulus bill] out through government bureaucracies. And I think that that is too slow. I think that the stimulus will have some effect beginning late this year and into next year at increasing economic growth. I just think that had they done it in a different way -- had they put money directly into people's pockets -- we would have seen the increased economic growth much faster.

We've actually seen this over the past week with the so-called "Cash for Clunkers" program where as soon as the government made those incentives available, hundreds of thousands of people went out and took advantage of that provision and you can see how quickly the money went out the door, as opposed to the stimulus where it's taking months and months and months and the government bureaucracies are slowly churning away trying to figure out how to spend this money.

FP: Would you be in favor of increasing funding for "Cash for Clunkers"?

KH: No. While I used "Cash for Clunkers" as a demonstration of a concept of getting money into people's hands, I think it is a silly program and a wasteful program. I think that it is amazing that we are paying people to destroy assets. I think as a matter of environmental policy it is incredibly inefficient. I think that basically what it is doing in part is encouraging a lot of people who had planned to buy cars sometime over the next six months to accelerate those car purchases to today. So I think it's largely a timing shift in the same way that sales tax holidays do not dramatically increase the amount that people buy. They just shift that buying to the weekend of the sales-tax holiday.

FP: On your blog, and in the media, you have been skeptical about the prospects of a cap-and-trade solution to global warming. What are your concerns about the bill that recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives?

KH: Basically that it won't work to achieve its stated goals. I think that the principal problem that we have is that we're trying a national approach to a global problem. The House bill, like most legislative proposals, would raise the cost of carbon in the United States. This only works if all countries or at least all of the largest greenhouse gas emitters reduce their emissions. My fear is that if the House bill were enacted into law we would raise energy prices in America, we would make American firms less competitive relative to their counterparts in China and India, and we would do so in such a way that they're not having any significant effect on the amount of greenhouse gasses going into the atmosphere because other large emitting nations aren't limiting theirs. So, costly for Americans and ineffective as an environmental matter. That doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

FP: You have frequently used your blog to suggest questions reporters ought to ask the White House about economic policy. Is this because reporters lack fluency in economics or because you think they aren't asking hard-enough questions?

KH: Depending on the reporter, [the answer is:] a little bit of both. White House reporters have to cover a wide range of topics so I wouldn't expect all of them to be experts in economics. But I know that the questions I had to deal with as a White House staffer seem a heck of a lot harder than the questions that the current White House press corps seems to be asking. Getting that kind of information out into the public space elevates the level of debate. What we need to be having is a discussion about the policy and not just lots of coverage about the beer summit.

Jay Garner knows Iraqi Kurdistan. First appointed to the region following the Gulf War, the retired U.S. lieutenant general has returned to the region countless times -- most famously when he was pulled out of retirement to lead U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. He was quickly succeeded in an expanded version of that role by L. Paul Bremer, but has since remained an active commentator on the region and the U.S. strategy there.

Speaking from Iraqi Kurdistan by phone, Garner discussed recently reported tensions between Kurdish leaders and the Iraqi government with Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson. As U.S. forces begin their long pullout from the country, Garner warned that Sunni-Shiite relations are far more fragile than those between Arabs and Kurds, that there are no stirrings of independence in the north, and that former U.S. senator and sitting Vice President Joseph Biden's call for what many described as a "soft partition" of Iraq would have served the country well.

Foreign Policy: As someone who has worked extensively with the Kurds, dating back to the 1990s, how is Iraqi Kurdistan?

Jay Garner: Well, compared to the rest of Iraq, it's incredibly stable. I'm sure your readers don't know this, but there hasn't been a soldier either killed or wounded here since 1991. There's never been a contractor or foreign businessman attacked here, so it's more stable than most of the places you live in the United States.

FP: Given the region's history of autonomous governance, can you talk about how the Kurdistan Regional Government works and how well its institutions are established?

JG: The autonomy is part of the Iraqi Constitution, so there can be no question about the autonomy. It's like asking someone in the [U.S. National Rifle Association] if they have a right to bear arms. Yeah, they do -- there's an amendment that says they can do that. Autonomy is in the Iraq Constitution, not the Kurdish Constitution, but the Iraqi Constitution -- voted on by the Iraqi people.

FP: How did you think about where the Kurds would fit into the political arrangement of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003?

JG: You gotta remember, it started before 2003. When the Turks would not let us move through Turkey, we, the United States, solicited the Peshmerga [Kurdish militia] as our allies, and they helped our forces in 2003 against Saddam Hussein. They were part of the coalition of the willing. [A] hell of a lot more Peshmerga fought than French, you know that?

I think the Kurds knew they had to be a part of Iraq, of the Iraqi government. They knew they couldn't be independent. I talked to the Kurdish leaders in early April [2003], and they were adamant that they had to be part of the new Iraq. I never saw a movement on their part to be independent. But they did demand that they keep their autonomous region, because they had written the Constitution back in 1992; they had had their first elections back in 1992; they had set up a parliament in the early 1990s; and they had their own governmental system. They didn't want to take that apart, and I don't blame them, because they had a well-run, well-structured government.

You might notice that when we began to put together the Iraqi government, you ended up with a Kurd as the president, a Kurd as the foreign minister, a Kurd as the deputy prime minister, and a Kurd as the chief of staff of the Army, because the Kurds were the only ones in Iraq who knew how to govern and lead, [and] because they had been doing that for 12 years.

FP: Recent reports have suggested that the Kurdish region could be positioning itself for maybe even independence -- or at least increased separation from the central government of Iraq. The Kurdish Parliament approved a new Constitution two weeks ago, for example, and has signed oil contracts with foreign companies.

JG: Wait a minute. You guys entered this at one point in time without any knowledge of what happened in the past and you think everything is from now on -- and it's not. There's a big rich past in all this.

No. 1, they've had a Constitution for about 17 years. It's been a draft constitution, but they've been practicing that Constitution. So that was not a new event. If you take their Constitution from the time they wrote it and began practicing that, it's about five times older than the Iraqi Constitution. No. 2, the Iraqi Constitution allows for regional constitutions, so they're doing everything within the context of the Iraqi Constitution. No. 3, they've been having elections since 1992; they're experienced in doing this thing. I'm here [in Iraqi Kurdistan] right now, and they're getting ready to have elections again -- huge politics going on, there are speeches everywhere. It reminds me of the [American] South when I was a kid when everybody got out, and that's the way it is here. They expect 80 percent turnout, almost.

Since the regime fell, I have not heard one Kurd, not one Kurdish leader -- in deep conversations I've had -- I have not heard one of them talk about independence. Everything I've heard them talk about is within the context of a whole Iraq. Now, what their worry is, is that when [U.S. forces] pull out, there will be a Sunni-Shiite civil war, which they will not participate in. And they're worried about how will Turkey respond to that, how will the United States respond to that, how will Iran respond to that. They have a fear of being left alone. But I don't see any movement here to try to be independent. I'd worry a hell of a lot more about what goes on in Baghdad than I would about what goes on in Erbil.

FP: What are your thoughts on the oil law that's still being drafted and discussed to decide how resources would be divided up between the regions?

JG: The Kurds are doing exactly what we do in the United States. The Kurds are saying, "We have oil here; we will bring companies in here." And they have a set of standards for companies: They have to be able to do so many barrels per day; they have to have this much money, this much past performance, all standard stuff. And they said, "We'll look at that [information] and we will award an oil block. And out of that oil block, 83 percent of the proceeds will go to Baghdad, which is required by their law, and we [the Kurds] will abide by the Baghdad law. But what we won't do is let Baghdad dictate what countries and what people come into our land and drill oil -- any more than the governor of Oklahoma is going to let Washington. D.C., come and drill." It's no different from what [Americans] do.

[As for the oil law,] I think they are going to come to a resolution. It'll be solved probably within the next year. I don't think it's a big thing. Baghdad still harbors central control of everything -- that's the legacy of Saddam Hussein. And in Kurdistan, which has been a quasi democracy for 18 years, they are more decentralized. They are not going to succumb to centralization by Baghdad any more than the southern [U.S.] states will succumb to centralization by the federal government. I mean, we bitch about [the same thing] in the United States.

FP: Is that in some ways almost an existential dilemma? As Baghdad pushes for more national integration with regions pushing for autonomy, how do you reconcile those two?

JG: When we [Americans] first came in here, had we put this country on a federal system, if we had had a Sunni entity, a Shiite entity, and there already was a Kurdish entity -- if we had done that, and we put in a weak central government that does things that governments do (it delineates currency, it has minimum standards for education and health, sends somebody to OPEC, sends somebody to the U.N., raises a small army, etc.), the power of government would have been in the federal entities. We would have stood a good chance of never going through things that we went through. The Sunnis would have been ethnically, religiously, and tribally comfortable. What we tried to do [instead] is forget about the ethnicities, forget about the religions, forget about the tribes, stir [the Iraqis] all up like a melting pot -- and it doesn't work.

Biden had the right answer; Biden talked about a partition, and that's probably an uncomfortable word, "partitioning," but he didn't mean it that way. He said there ought to be a federal unity among these homogeneous groups, which were the same religion, same ethnicity, and homogeneous tribes. That made a lot of sense. But we didn't do that, and I think we suffered the consequences.

FP: With Biden as the U.S. envoy for reconciliation in Iraq, what priorities should he be pushing for?

JG: No. 1, a referendum on disputed lands, because I don't think you can ever have a stable Iraq as long as you have an unstable Arab-Kurdish border. No. 2, a resolution on the oil law because it's a thorn in everybody's side. No. 3, continue to exert whatever leverage we have on the Iraqi government to get these things done.

Anything that happens here, whether it is Kurds versus Arabs or Shiite versus Sunni -- and those are huge flash points -- is not an Iraqi problem; it's a regional problem. It's huge. It's much greater than Iraq, because if it's Shiite-Sunni you are going to have Iranians on the side of the Shiites and you are going to have the Gulf region on the side of the Sunnis. If it's Arab-Kurdish, you are going to have an ethnic war, and lives will be gone and other countries will get involved because they are going to want to shape how it comes out.

I don't think the [U.S.] administration wants to pull out in 2011, run for the presidency in 2012, and have this whole damned thing blow up on them, you know? So it is good that [U.S. President Barack Obama has] appointed Biden; it's good that he's made a special envoy; and it's good that Biden is drilling in on this. Biden is a guy that has studied a long time. He is more thoughtful about this than the other people, and I think that's a good first step. But you've got to have some leverage to execute that. So whatever leverage we have left, we need to make sure that those flash points are solved before we leave.

A year after surviving an assassination attempt, President José Ramos-Horta is feeling good about his country. Peace seems to have taken hold in East Timor, where U.N. peacekeepers have been based almost continuously since 1999. The economy is bucking trends in the region with a 12 percent growth rate last year. And Aug. 30 marks the 10-year anniversary of the vote for independence from Indonesia. For Ramos-Horta, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his nonviolent work toward independence and was elected president in 2007, things could hardly look better.

Proud of recent success and touting plans for more, Ramos-Horta spoke to Foreign Policy from his new Chinese-built presidential compound in Dili, East Timor's capital. He criticizes the West's misunderstandings about his country and discusses the progress it has made in recent years. Despite challenges ahead -- from security reform to corruption to widespread poverty -- Ramos-Horta says that the United States is closer to being a "failing state" than the country he leads. Excerpts:

Foreign Policy: The United Nations decided in February to extend the mandate of its peacekeeping force for another year. How is security-sector reform in East Timor progressing? Are the East Timorese police ready to resume full responsibilities from the United Nations?

José Ramos-Horta: I am confident that the PNTL [National Police of East Timor] can assume full responsibilities. I prefer that the handover be at a prudent pace alongside continued training and institutional reform. I would like the U.N. police to give backup until 2012, and I know there is political will among contributing countries for this.

I see a two-to-three-year horizon before we have progressed enough in redeveloping our defense forces. The Army has recruited new soldiers to fill projected numbers. In the next two years we face a generation[al] change, as resistance veterans retire after serving this country for 30 years.

FP: Many of the personnel involved in the 2006 East Timor crisis have retained senior positions in the security forces. Are elites exempt from justice? How will this affect people's confidence in the country's institutions?

JRH: Some American and European "geniuses," who write in newspapers and so-called academic journals, have labeled ours as a failed state. Well, I can only cite another American institution, the International Republican Institute, which did a two-month survey in late 2008 and reached the following conclusions: Confidence in the president is 83 percent, confidence in the police is 82 percent, confidence in the prime minister, I think, is 79 percent, and more than 60 percent had confidence in how the country is being run.

Some of these pseudo intellectuals in the United States seem to forget that Timor-Leste [East Timor], along with China, is the one financing U.S. debt. So who is the failing state -- the United States or Timor-Leste?

FP: Generating employment is vital, given East Timor's youthful demographics and the links between unemployment and gang and/or political violence. What needs to be done to address this?

JRH: For a few years now, the government has to be the agent that takes the lead in economic development in this country. We need massive investments in roads and roads and roads. If we are serious about developing our agriculture and ensuring food security, if we want to promote tourism, if we want to provide our people access to services such as education and health, we need roads. This will create thousands of jobs for many years to come, and this [project] will last 10 years. We will build 4,000 kilometers of roads, a new airport, and a port. Foreign investment will come from tourism as we develop this infrastructure.

We are negotiating with Digicel to become the second mobile carrier here, to complement Timor Telecom, which is majority-owned by Portugal Telecom [PT]. We have started dialogue with PT for them to agree to our preference, which is [market] liberalization. PT should abide by European standards -- so no monopolies here, as in Europe. As prices are reduced, you will see a huge expansion of mobile-phone users. Timor could have 500,000, maybe even 800,000 users, rather than the current 150,000 out of a population of 1.1 million.

FP: East Timor will soon celebrate its 10-year anniversary of the end of Indonesian occupation. How do you plan to mark this date?

JRH: We will celebrate August 30 in a booming economy. Dili and the rest of country are at peace; the police and Army are reconciled; and we are celebrating at a time when cooperation between Timor-Leste and Indonesia is at its best -- no two countries on the planet have a better bilateral relationship.

FP: What plans are in place for post-conflict justice for the crimes committed during the Indonesian occupation and around the 1999 referendum?

JRH: My personal preference is to adopt a law that simply puts an end to the tragic chapters of the past. Let bygones be bygones. Let us not forget the victims and heroes, but let us forgive those who did harm, because God gave us a greater gift: our independence.

Let's forget about an international tribunal -- it will never happen.

Indonesia has been remarkable. It left humiliated, after investing in Timor-Leste in a way that the Portuguese never did. Indonesia is today the most vibrant democracy in Southeast Asia. It has made remarkable progress, and I leave it to them on their own watch to deal with the perpetrators of violence in Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

I lost two brothers and a sister [in the violence]. We were able to exhume the body of my sister in 2003, but we have never been able to trace [my brothers,] Nuno or Gil [Guilherme]. My mother disagrees with me, and many mothers do not share my accommodating stance with Indonesia. I say the greater justice is that we are free.

FP: How would you assess the role of the United Nations and the international community since they first intervened in 1999?

JRH: I am eternally grateful to the international community, which has invested so much in this country. With mixed results, for sure -- the U.N. is not a perfect organization. But we have to accept our share of responsibility for developments so far. It was not the U.N. that decided the police and Army should fight in 2006. It was not the U.N. that told [former president and now prime minister] Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão and [former Prime Minister] Mari Alkatiri to quarrel. There are many more-important issues facing the U.N. and the international community than Timor-Leste.

FP: Prime Minister Gusmão has recently been accused of approving a large contract with a company of which his daughter was a major shareholder. What is your response to these corruption allegations?

JRH: I remain 100 percent confident in Xanana Gusmão. He was right in assigning contracts to 15 Timorese companies, and his daughter happened to be a minor member of one company. Should he have said that this company cannot take part just because of that? I don't know the details of how this was done. But I can guarantee that Xanana Gusmão is the most decent, most caring person you will find in this country.