Jakarta – A group of university graduates in the troubled territory of East Timor have set up a forum advocating a referendum on self determination for the former Portuguese colony, reports said here Monday. A ceremony inaugurating the Forum of Pro-Referendum Graduates and for the Development of Timor Leste (Forsarepetil) in the East Timorese capital of Dili on Sunday was attended by some 300 university graduates, students and other civilians, the official Antara news agency said. "This forum demands the unconditional release of all Timor Leste (East Timor) political prisoners and detainees, both in and outside Timor Leste and including Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao," a declaration issued by the group said.

Xanana, the head of the East Timorese pro-independence movement, is currently serving a 20-year jail sentence in Jakarta on charges of plotting against the state and illegal possession of weapons.

"Besides, (the forum) calls for a halt to all form of violence in Timor Leste and the immediate disbanding of paramilitary groups such as Gardapaksi, Makikit, Saka and Halilintar," the declaration added. The four groups are sponsored by the military and recruit local youths. The groups, some of them armed by the Indonesian military, have been accused of repression against pro-independence sympathisers there. The Kompas daily quoted the head of the Indonesian military command in East Timor, Colonel Tono Suratman as saying in Dili on Saturday the authorities will disband the groups and take back all weaponry lent to them.

Fransisco Barreto, one of the founders of the Forum said the new forum had a membership of some 700 university graduates. At the head of the forum was Domingos de Sousa, an official of the culture and education office in East Timor who is an in-law of Gusmao.

Benyamin Cortereal, a linguistics professor at the Timor Timur University, was appointed secretary general, while Gusmao and exiled East Timorese pro-independence activist and Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos Horta were both appointed as advisors to the forum.