The president behind the nation

Xanana recognized that Fretilin was driving an ideological wedge between his supporters and the rest of East Timor. The US, on the heels of Vietnam war, worried that Fretilin would turn East Timor into a little Cuba in the midst of Southeast Asia.

"There were people that feared Fretilin, and he was the one to see that our struggle was doomed if he didn't fix that,'' says Mr. Simith, who now leads the Falintil Veteran's Association.

Starting in 1980, Xanana went from village to village, sometimes disguised as a priest, reaching out a hand to old friends and old enemies, asking them to recommit to the resistance.

"That's when Xanana became a phenomenon,'' says Perreira. "He showed himself in the truest sense to be a leader – to go and speak to the people and inspire them to follow, yet to be the furthest thing from authoritarian."

His deep-set eyes, salt-and-pepper beard, and sonorous voice made him a guerrilla leader from central casting. Comparisons with South Africa's Nelson Mandela began to be made, and East Timor was catapulted into the world ranks of fashionable causes.

Xanana was born in the sleepy town of Manututo, one of nine children. His father was a schoolteacher, placing the family one notch above the peasantry in the Portuguese system. Friends of Xanana say he was unusually sensitive to the public whippings and forced labor that were common in his youth.

At 13, he was sent to the elite Jesuit seminary near Dili. He enjoyed poetry classes and literature, but was restless and dropped out at 16 to attend a regular high school in Dili. He eventually received his degree.

He developed a small reputation for his poems. But he was also known as an occasionally brilliant but often eccentric goalkeeper for the Academica soccer club. He seemed "too busy making up sonnets to actually stop any goals," according to "The Crossing," a book by East Timorese author Luis Cardoso.

Xanana appears leery of his iconic stature at home, which would veer close to a personality cult if not for his regular-guy approach.

Before the presidential election, he repeatedly said he didn't want the job, and preferred retirement to politics.

But after everyone from elders in the highlands to former US President Clinton pushed him to run for president, he came to see what most Timor watchers had long known: He was the greatest uniting force in the country.

His powers of forgiveness are legendary. He has forgiven Indonesia for its occupation, which claimed upwards of 200,000 lives. The power to forgive even extends to Indonesian Gen. Prabowo Subianto. General Prabowo ran death squads and interrogation centers from which many of Xanana's friends never returned. Yet in a visit to Jakarta two years ago, Xanana embraced his former enemy and offered to make peace.

"I don't think that he likes this,'' says Perreira. "But he's so much of a bigger man than the Indonesian generals, than these other men. He knows that this is what's good for his people."

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