A fair go for East Timor
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