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The organizing committee as been able to secure a conference rate for car rentals for those who may wish to rent a car while in Victoria. The Budget Rent a Car facility is located across the street from the conference hotel.

The rates are: $40 a day for compact , $42 a day for midsize and $44 a day for fullsize. Also minivans are $69 a day. You may book by email at reserve@budgetvictoria.com. The conference reservation number is 245631. Budget may also be reached by a toll free number 1-800-668-9833. When booking either by phone or email please mention ONLINE DISPUTE as the rate name.

Thanks to:

Nathan Eisenstein
Budget Car and Truck Rental
Director Of Revenue Management
3657 Harriet Road
Victoria B.C. V8Z3T1
PH (250) 953-5311 FAX (250) 953-5250
neisenstein@budgetvictoria.com
www.budgetvictoria.com

We are informed by the host hotel, the Marriott Inner Harbour, that the ODR Forum will soon reach its capacity in the hotel. If you are attending the forum and have not made your reservation. Please do so soon. See the hotel information under the travel and lodging link.

Paul Toohey | April 18, 2008
The Australian
Horta welcomed home

IT was a different kind of madness to that which has so often plagued the streets of Dili. This time it was an outpouring of affection and a celebration of survival.

Nine weeks after being shot down in cold blood, President Jose Ramos Horta yesterday challenged his deepest fears and drove slowly among thousands of East Timorese who lined the dusty streets to welcome him home.

Mr Ramos Horta stepped off a charter plane at 8am and looked tense as he took to the red carpet.

Dignitaries applauded and an armed guard snapped to attention. It made you wince to see his mates hug him and clap him on the back, right where he took two bullets.

The President began to relax as he moved among dancers and old friends. But old friends can be dangerous in Timor, as he knows.

It was then straight to a press conference, where Mr Ramos Horta said he would give "a few brief words". But the former diplomat does not know how to be brief. He talked at great length in Tetum and Portuguese. Strangely, it was when he was talking in English that he broke down and cried.

"Sorry, I'm emotional. Even though I was shot and almost killed, I didn't want Mr Salsinha or anyone else to die," said the President, referring to the rebel leader who remains at large.

Mr Ramos Horta told of how he had believed he had built a warm relationship with the rebels, giving them money out of his pocket and driving up and down the mountains to win their trust and resolve the issue.

Then he toughened up and sent a message to Salsinha, who has said he will hand himself in only to Mr Ramos Horta. The President said he didn't want Salsinha.

"I prefer he takes himself to his church in Gleno (in the west) but not to me," he said. "He has to surrender to justice."

Mr Ramos Horta said he believed individuals in Indonesia had been urging Major Alfredo Reinado, who was killed by the President's guard during the attack in which Mr Ramos Horta was shot, to act against him.

He insisted the Indonesian Government had no part in the events.

Then the President left the airport complex surrounded by the hard men of East Timor, the GNR, or Portuguese riot police, who jogged alongside his vehicle.

Mr Ramos Horta gave an unscripted address to parliament, telling MPs their most important work in coming months related to "the barefoot and illiterate" people who were impatient and hungry.

He warned of a coming crisis with rising rice prices.

After the speech, Acting President Fernando de Araujo officially handed back the presidency to Mr Ramos Horta. The President left the parliament and headed east out of town to his home in Metiaut, on a newly laid bitumen road that workers had been working around the clock to ready for his return.

Mr Ramos Horta, who has admitted to being deeply traumatised by being shot, told The Australian he would know for sure how well he had recovered emotionally only when he saw the spot where he was shot.

But the President was too distracted to consider such matters. Before reaching his house, he got out of his car at a monument on a roundabout, where three local villages had combined to perform traditional dances.

A marching band of Catholic school children walked him up the road to his door, and Mr Ramos Horta paused only briefly to consider the spot where he was taken down.

Then it was inside for lunch with his family, and no more official program for the day.

Thousands of T-shirts with images of Mr Ramos Horta and the Pope had been distributed for his return, with the words "Bemvindo Sr President".

Welcome home, Mr President.

The ODR Forum is very lucky to have developed relationships with learners at three institutions: Royal Roads University - School of Peace and Conflict Studies; Strauss Institutue of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California; and Camosun College, Victoria.

Several Royal Roads and Pepperdine learners will be helping as volunteers at the Fourm, and this expereince will count towards extern or practicum hours for them, giving them credit towards graduation for their degrees. A communications learner at Camosun will have the opportunity to develop her photgraphy portfolio, and to gain experience, by acting as the Forum's official photorapher.

Please meet a couple of the learners:

Doug Leigh is an Associate Professor of Education with Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Masters of Dispute Resolution through the Straus Institute. His research interests include the role of trust and reconciliation within ecommerce disputes, as well as the graphical representation of ODR concepts within a semantic network framework.

Roxanne Meakes is currently enrolled at Royal Roads University in the Bachelor of Justice Program.While she has no concrete plans on what she will do with her degree when finished, she does have her eye on the MA program in Conflict Analysis and Management.

Eleanor Creighton is currently enrolled in the Bachelor of Justice Studies program at Royal Roads. After Graduation I am hoping to either go to law school to study aboriginal law or to assist aboriginal Canadians who become involved in the Canadian Criminal Justice System. If I do not go to law school I plan to do a Masters.

Please also meet one of the faculty members from Royal Roads who is providing a lot of energy and leadership for the Forum:

Prof. Dr. Erich P. Schellhammer is the Program Head of the BA in Justice Studies within the School of Peace and Conflict Management at Royal Roads University. Dr. Schellhammer has degrees in law and philosophy and his main research interest is in establishing ontological models that demonstrate the desirability of cultural diversity. The ontological models also reveal principles for a philosophical foundation for human rights, for an ethics that accounts for otherness and for peaceful communication.

Please do join me in thanking our educational institutional partners!!

There are now almost 100 registrants from 25 countries.

We are looking forward to a wide and interesting set of views proposed by the particpants.

I have been attending the ABA conference on dispute resolution at Seattle. I have been very surprised, and interested by the number of sessions which deal with Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). These include Online Courts: the Future of Small Claims?; Using the Internet to Offer the Most Capalable Mediation Services; Intergrating Conflict Resolutions Systems in Corporate America; and Teaching International Conflict Resolution with Video Games.

If you require a letter of invitation from the organizing committee in order to obtain an entry visa from the Government of Canada, please contact Frank Fowlie, at ombudsman@icann.org

Thank you

http://www.smartsettle.com/news-and-events/2008-odr-forum

Smartsettle has kindly agreed to sponsor the printing on the ODR Forum program handbook.

As of March 24, 2008, over 70 registrations have been completed for the ODR Forum, representing 24 different nations.

Please click on the register link.