THE SPLIT PEACE PRIZE PAIR

By Anthony Spaeth

In the wider world, East Timor is a geopolitical footnote, a mere half of an island that became a short-lived nation, born in fratricidal guerrilla war and eventually swallowed by its giant neighbor Indonesia. For 21 years, despite reports of abuses by Indonesia, East Timor has been a subject mostly for diplomatic specialists. Its exiled representatives looked in vain for support, literally knocking on doors that refused to open. And then last week East Timor was back in the headlines. The committee for the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo gave its coveted award to two men who have never ceased perpetuating their homeland's hope for self-rule. One is Jose Ramos-Horta, 46, an exiled public relations ambassador for East Timor's guerrillas, who is now based in Australia; the other is Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, 48, the Roman Catholic bishop who resides in East Timor. While the award spotlights a neglected conflict, the world is divided about what to do about East Timor. Belo and Ramos-Horta certainly are.

Indonesia immediately decried the choice of Ramos-Horta. In 1975, at the age of 25, the former newsman became "foreign minister" of a government formed by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, or Fretilin, which slaughtered card-holding members of four other political parties following Portugal's withdrawal from its former colony. Indonesia's invasion the following month sent most Fretilin leaders into exile. Ramos-Horta advocates Fretilin's peace plan: a two-year pullback of Indonesian troops and an eventual U.N.-sponsored referendum on self-rule. "We, the East Timorese, are offering an olive branch to Indonesia," Ramos-Horta told TIME last week, describing the process as a way for Indonesia to save face and regain respect. He says his share of the $1.1 million award should have gone to Xanana Gusmao, the Fretilin leader jailed by Indonesia in 1993. Ramos-Horta says Gusmao will determine how the money is spent, though that could prove tricky since the guerrilla leader is being held incommunicado on a 20-year commuted sentence.

Belo received the news of the prize as he was saying Mass in East Timor, which is more than 90% Catholic and where the church is just about the only intermediary between the government and the cowed populace. In 1989 he fearlessly asked the U.N. to support a referendum in East Timor, and he has criticized Indonesia's policy of importing non-Timorese migrants to the island. After the massacre of some 200 protesters in 1991, Belo loudly called for a commission of inquiry. He has said the Indonesian military had planned, but failed, to assassinate him twice, in 1989 and 1991. But he has also condemned Fretilin for the massacres it led in 1975, which he blames squarely on Gusmao.

Belo believes Fretilin's savagery is neither forgotten nor forgiven. While he still advocates a referendum, the bishop is not as confident as Ramos-Horta seems to be about its outcome. Many East Timorese, he says, may even choose union with Indonesia. He offers an alternative to a potentially violent referendum: East Timor as an Indonesian province with special autonomy.

The prize is divided--and so are its winners. Meanwhile, a shamed Indonesia remains East Timor's overlord. An agitated Belo asked TIME last week, "Who will be able to expel the Indonesian forces from here? Who?"

--By Anthony Spaeth. Reported by Michael Creadon/Sydney and Michael Shari/Jakarta

With reporting by MICHAEL CREADON/SYDNEY AND MICHAEL SHARI/ JAKARTA