Para bem entender José Ramos-Horta

The Age - June 29, 2008 Not diplomatic: Did Ramos Horta botch his bid for UN job? Tom Hyland IT WAS Jose Ramos Horta's Hamlet moment, and he played it for more than it was worth. He agonised for a month over what he called his great dilemma: to be, or to not be, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights? He didn't keep his internal torment to himself. The question was whether to resign as president of East Timor and leave dusty Dili with its poverty, intrigue, its unhealed wounds and unsealed roads, the drab refugee camps and the thankless task of nation building. It would mean abandoning the country that would not have won freedom without him. On offer, he said, was one of the UN's top jobs, with its prestige and perks, the splendour of its headquarters in the Palais Wilson in Geneva and the office in New York, and the chance to use his diplomatic skills to do good on the global stage. There were two assumptions in his indecision: he had the credentials for the job, and it was his for the taking. And there's the rub. The first assumption was contentious. The second was false. And in publicly revealing his dilemma, he may have fumbled the diplomatic game he'd once played like a virtuoso. Talking as if the UN job was his, when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hadn't interviewed all the candidates in what he promised would be a transparent process, just wasn't diplomatic. For the past four weeks it has been widely known in Dili - because he told everyone - that he was considering applying for, and accepting, the position. Always, the way he told it, he was torn, between ambition and the needs of the people of East Timor. Early this month he told officials in Dili that France, the US and Australia backed his bid. Having declared he was being encouraged to apply - including by Mr Ban himself - and expressing interest in the job, Mr Ramos Horta would then ponder whether he could abandon the people who elected him President only a year ago. Eleven days ago he told reporters in Dili that the prospect of the UN job was "a big dilemma". Last Wednesday he told Phillip Adams on ABC radio that "in the next few hours, a day or so, I have to tell the UN in New York a 'yes' or 'no'." The clear assumption was not whether he was applying for the job, but that he already had it. "A 'yes' is very tempting, almost irresistible," he said. "But I also feel genuinely a lot about my country … so it's difficult."