Australia: Responding to RI's transformation

Australia: Responding to RI's transformation

This is the second of two articles based on an address by
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in the Australia-
Asia Institute's 1999 Australia in Asia Lecture Series State
Library of New South Wales, Sydney, on March 1, 1999.

SYDNEY: The Australian government made a major shift in its
policy approach to East Timor when the prime minister wrote to
President B.J. Habibie last December emphasizing the importance
of Indonesia talking directly with East Timorese about the
province's future status. He suggested long-term prospects for
reconciliation would be best served by East Timorese holding an
act of self-determination at some future time, following a period
of autonomy for East Timor. The Australian government has also
made clear its support for the release of Jose Alexandre "Xanana"
Gusmao in light of the important role he must play in the
negotiations on East Timor's future.

As both President Habibie and Xanana Gusmao have made clear to
me, these suggestions were a catalyst inside Indonesia that
helped produce the policy announcement on Jan. 27 concerning
possible independence for East Timor and the transfer from prison
of Xanana. Australia welcomed Indonesia's stated willingness to
take account of the wishes of the East Timorese people, and the
later decision to move Xanana Gusmao from prison to house arrest.

The resignation of president Soeharto last May cleared the way
for a resolution of the East Timor question. Before that, the
fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War took away
a key rationale for Australia's quiet acceptance of Indonesia's
incorporation of East Timor. Successive Australian governments
endorsed Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor because Australia
did not want to see the balkanization of Indonesia with the
granting of independence fanning separatist sentiment elsewhere
in the archipelago. The Portuguese left East Timor in a state of
civil war with little prospect of stability, and there were
concerns that an independent East Timor would be economically
weak and susceptible to interests inimical to Australia's and
Indonesia's interests.

I believe those considerations to be totally understandable in
the historical context in which they were made. The Whitlam
government was understandably concerned at the prospect of a
fiercely left-wing government sympathetic to the Soviet Union
controlling East Timor at a time when the Cold War perhaps came
closer to Australia's shores than ever before with the fall of
Saigon and Phnom Penh to communist forces in 1975. With the
departure of Portugal, East Timor's infrastructure was in an
appalling state and its literacy rate was less than 10 percent.
In those circumstances, the acquiescence of the Whitlam
government followed by the Fraser and Hawke governments to
Indonesia's integration plans was not unremarkable.

There remains to this day keen public interest in the
decisions taken by Australian governments around the time
immediately preceding, during and soon after that integration. It
was, after all, one of the major Australian foreign policy
decisions of recent times. To help provide the public with a
clear understanding of the development of Australian policy
during this period, I have asked my department to prepare the
early release of records covering Indonesia's incorporation of
Portuguese Timor between 1974 and 1976. This period covers
decisions taken by both Labor and Coalition governments.

The records will also cover the period from the announcement
by Portugal in 1974 that it was decolonizing East Timor through
to Soeharto's signing of the bill integrating East Timor with
Indonesia in July 1976. The records will be released as part of
my department's historical records series. As part of this
exercise, the department will accelerate the release of records
related to the deaths of five Australian-based journalists at
Balibo in October 1975.

But the Australian government is not obsessed about the past.
We are looking to the future and having made our policy shift
must now respond to developments currently concerning East Timor.
The next round of UN-sponsored tripartite negotiations on East
Timor, which will take place on March 8 and March 9, could see an
autonomy package finalized. When I met him last week in Jakarta,
President Habibie repeated to me his intention to resolve the
question of East Timor's status by Jan. 1, 2000, and to have the
East Timorese make a decision on autonomy before the June 7
election.

What Australia has consistently stressed -- and what I
confirmed in my talks with the President and in Bali with foreign
minister Ali Alatas -- is that whether the eventual outcome is
for autonomy or full independence, the transition must take place
in a peaceful and orderly manner and the East Timorese people
must be fully consulted at all stages.

Australia has welcomed Indonesia's commitment not to abandon
East Timor in any transition to full independence. We have also
expressed the hope that any transition could be handled in such a
way that UN or other peacekeeping forces would not be necessary.
The responsibility for managing the transition process and
maintaining order in East Timor lies with the parties involved,
not with Australia or the international community. That said, we
have committed ourselves to assisting Indonesia and the East
Timorese where possible, including through considering future
levels of development assistance.

While the prime minister, other ministers and I have indicated
our preference for a long transition period before a decision is
taken on East Timor's final status, we have always made it
abundantly clear that it is for the East Timorese themselves to
decide. Whether they want independence instead of autonomy,
whether they want a quick or a prolonged transition, we will
respect their decision. As I told Xanana Gusmao as we sat in his
Jakarta house, Australia will be there to help the East Timorese
people whatever course they eventually take.

In all our considerations of the issues that are involved in
East Timor's future, our primary motivation is the welfare of the
East Timorese people. We have not forgotten the contribution they
made to the security of Australia and the well-being of
Australian servicemen in World War II.

As the largest bilateral aid donor to East Timor by far,
Australia has already budgeted over $6 million in development
assistance for the 1998/1999 financial year. We are also one of
the largest contributors to the International Committee of the
Red Cross in East Timor, having provided more than $5 million to
the ICRC since 1982/1983. Through our Human Rights Fund, we
provided assistance in the area of legal aid and human rights
monitoring, dissemination of information on human rights issues,
and support for addressing specific human rights cases. We are
currently looking at developmental and humanitarian requirements
for an autonomous or independent East Timor.

Events have moved with breathtaking speed in the past few
months. But they have not passed us by. Australia has and will
continue to play an active role as developments unfold. Let me
take a few moments to outline some of our recent initiatives.

Over the last week I have conducted extensive consultations on
East Timor with President Habibie and Indonesian ministers, with
Indonesian opposition leaders Megawati Soekarnoputri and Amien
Rais, and with East Timorese leaders, most notably Xanana Gusmao.
This morning I arrived back in Australia from Lisbon where I
spent Saturday meeting with the Portuguese foreign minister and
officials.

At the same time I sent the secretary of my department, Dr.
Ashton Calvert, to New York and Washington to talk with the UN
secretary-general and other senior United Nations officials and
representatives of the American administration.

There are now a series of high hurdles for East Timor to jump.
First, negotiations on the autonomy package between the
Indonesians and the Portuguese in New York will be concluded next month.

Secondly, the people of East Timor will be consulted on
whether they accept the package or they would rather have full
independence. We all accept -- including Xanana Gusmao -- that
the consultative process will be less than a full referendum but
we and the others have insisted that the methodology used is seen
by the East Timorese themselves as credible. One possible option
is for a consultative assembly to be elected by the East Timorese
and for that assembly to make the decision. There are other ideas
being considered, all of which involve very wide participation by
the East Timorese.

Thirdly, once the decision is made on East Timor's future,
there will be the task of managing a smooth transition to either
wide-ranging autonomy or independence. The Indonesians have given
me a firm commitment they will not just walk out and leave East
Timor in a state of chaos if independence is chosen. That is good
news. But Indonesia does not want to bear the financial burden
for East Timor once it separates from Indonesia, should that
happen.

Instead, it will be happy to make security and administrative
resources available to the territory provided the cost is borne
by the United Nations. Obviously, in those circumstances, other
countries -- including Australia and Portugal -- would assist. I
have been pleased at the breadth of commitment to helping East
Timor that exists around the world.

The fourth and most difficult issue of all is how to manage
the security environment within East Timor while all these
changes are taking place. In our view, there will almost
certainly have to be some international confidence-building and
administrative presence in East Timor from an early stage. This
would have to operate under the auspices of the United
Nations and would, without doubt, involve some Australians.

At this stage, we do not favor a United Nations peacekeeping
force of the kind involved in Cambodia. Indeed, none of the
actors in this drama are calling for that. After all Indonesia
and the East Timorese must bear the primary responsibility for
working out arrangements that not only provide for a peaceful
transition, but which lay the groundwork for a peaceful and
productive long-term relationship.

What would be more realistic would be the provision of United
Nations-based administrative support, a confidence-building
presence and -- if independence is the preferred choice of the
East Timorese -- some police presence alongside the East Timorese
police.

The process of East Timorese reconciliation is crucial to the
manner in which the whole East Timor issue evolves over the next
couple of years. It is necessary now to prevent bloodshed. It is
necessary to allow the process of testing East Timorese opinion
on the autonomy package to work. It is necessary to enable the
East Timorese to work out in the end what sort of country they
want. As part of this reconciliation process, we believe it is
crucial that East Timorese leaders of all factions sit down
together to work on a way forward, especially on a transition to
a new status. We have told East Timorese leaders we will provide
support for a representative gathering.

Finally, there is the question of who will run East Timor from
next year if East Timor opts for independence. Obviously, the
East Timorese themselves will in time take full control of East
Timor but probably after a period of a couple of years, during
which the United Nations would play a role in the territory's
administration.

Indonesia, the East Timorese, Portugal and Australia have all
put a lot of work already into how the East Timor issue could
evolve.

The Indonesia we see today is so changed from that of only a
year ago that it can truly be said to have gone through a
transformation.

Some of the change has been for the bad, but some --
particularly political change -- has been for the good.

The task for Australia is to help Indonesia make the shift in
as smooth a manner as possible; to ensure that the winds that
are blowing through Indonesia make the tree of state stronger,
and do not blow it down. It is up to us to be supportive in
that process, and to encourage it wherever we can.