Australia-RI defense pact defended

Australia-RI defense pact defended

SYDNEY (Agencies): Prime Minister Paul Keating sought yesterday to hose down criticism here of Australia's defense pact with Indonesia, arguing that it would help the cause of the people of East Timor.

As Catholic leaders and East Timorese refugees attacked Canberra over what they saw as a "morally objectionable" treaty, Keating said deeper links with Indonesia gave Canberra the chance to improve the condition of the East Timorese.

Under an agreement announced Thursday and seen by some as a major foreign policy achievement for Keating, the two nations are committed to "consult" each other if one is attacked and to consider measures that could see either defending the other against attack.

Accompanied by Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, Keating will make his sixth visit as prime minister to Indonesia on Monday for the treaty signing ceremony to be attended by Indonesian President Soeharto and Foreign Minister Ali Alatas.

Keating said whatever possibilities the East Timorese had for better lives were not going to be improved by "Australia turning its back on Indonesia."

Rather, they would be improved in the context "of a broader, deeper relationship between Australia and Indonesia," he said in a radio interview.

Keating said the cause of East Timor had been set back by Australia's relations with Jakarta souring in the decade after integration.

"By and large Australia turned its back on Indonesia ... it took Timor nowhere," he said. "I think this sort of model we produced yesterday is the right framework to be working in for Timor."

Asked earlier about the circumstances in which Australian military assistance might be given and if China posed a threat, Keating disagreed with the word "threat", but acknowledged that uneven economic growth in China could result in "tensions within the Chinese society".

"The fact of the matter is that the way you maintain security is that you cover these bases like ... free trade in goods and services, like proper regional and defense co-operation," he said.

He disputed that the frequency of his visits to Jakarta and the fact that President Soeharto had never been to Australia suggested an uneven relationship, citing as benefits the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation agreement and the defense pact which would have been "inconceivable just a few years ago."

Evans said Thursday that there was no circumstance in which Australian troops could be engaged in East Timor as a result of the treaty, which he said referred to external and not internal threats.

However, he agreed that when the integration took place in 1975 East Timor would "probably have been perceived as an externally derived source of potential instability for the region."

In an interview broadcast here Thursday, Ali Alatas said East Timor would continue to divide Australia and Indonesia despite the security agreement.

"I have always maintained that, actually, we have a very good relationship between our two countries except for one issue, which is East Timorese," Alatas told Australian national radio.

But he said the agreement would dispel any thought that Indonesia was a threat to Australia or that Australia was a threat to Indonesia.