A fair go for East Timor

Australia, already exploiting the wealth of the Timor Sea, has bright prospects of much more to come. East Timor, still waiting and dependent on aid from Australia and elsewhere, is impatient. Its determination to win a better deal on Timor Sea resources is straining relations with Australia in a way not seen since it won its independence, with Australia's help.

In July 2001 East Timor's unelected leaders and representatives from the United Nations signed a provisional agreement with the Australian Government to assure East Timor 90 percent of tax revenues from oil and gas extracted from the so- called joint development area in the Timor Sea. That agreement changed the 50:50 split set down in the Timor Gap Treaty signed with Indonesia in 1989. The Australian Government says the new arrangement is generous and is dismayed that free, independent East Timor now accuses Australia of unfairness.

What has gone wrong? The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, says Dili is trying to shame Australia. He deplores its claims of unfairness as a tactic, surprising and mistaken "after all we've done for East Timor". The President of East Timor, Xanana Gusmao, says it is East Timor that is generous to Australia since East Timor's true entitlement is being denied it. Already, he says, Australia collects a million dollars a day in oil and gas revenues that rightfully belong to East Timor.

Production from the Corallina and Laminaria fields, both just south of Australia's border with Indonesia and just west of the joint development area with East Timor, began in 1999. The East Timor Government says revenue from this production -- now going entirely to Australia -- as well as 100 percent, not 90 percent, of what is in prospect from the joint development zone, rightfully belongs to East Timor. It wants its claim settled by the International Court of Justice and says that Canberra acted in bad faith by saying -- a few weeks before East Timor gained its independence -- that it would no longer accept that body's jurisdiction.

Many Australians will agree with Mr Downer that the present arrangements are generous and that East Timor is ungrateful. It would be shortsighted, however, in the negotiations to confirm or modify by treaty the arrangements provisionally agreed to in July 2001, to reject Dili's claims out of hand. It is not only in the interests of East Timor that it stand proud and self-sufficient, thanks to the bounty of its full, fair share of Timor Sea resources. It is in Australia's, too. -- The Sydney Morning Herald