Australia shifts stance on Timor

Australia shifts stance on Timor

ADELAIDE (Agencies): Australia unveiled a major policy shift over East Timor on Tuesday and said it could see the restive province eventually winning independence from Indonesia, Reuters reported.

The Australian government, which previously only supported autonomy for the territory, said it backed a political settlement that could put East Timor on the path to long-term independence.

Australia, along with the United States, are the only Western countries to recognize Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Canberra still considered independence a "second-best outcome", but it now supported a New Caledonia-style deal offering complete self- determination after a period of autonomy.

"Our approach to East Timor is, I suppose, somewhat akin to the way the Matignon approach worked in New Caledonia," he said, citing the pact that set the South Pacific territory on the road to independence from France, but only after 15 years of self- rule.

"First of all you would have to put in place an autonomy package," Downer told a news conference.

"The people of East Timor would have an opportunity to see how autonomy really was ... and in the end give them, some years down the road, the opportunity to pass judgment on whether they wanted to continue with that arrangement."

East Timorese independence campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos Horta welcomed Australia's policy shift.

"I would say we are on the same wavelength for the first time in many years," Ramos Horta told Reuters.

Indonesia unilaterally incorporated East Timor in 1976, a year after the abrupt departure of its Portuguese colonizers, in a move never recognized by the United Nations.

Downer said Australia was concerned that independence could spark the fragmentation of Indonesia and cause regional instability.

However, he said, Australia believed the East Timorese would not accept Indonesian offers of autonomy which did not include the option of an "act of self-determination" in the future.

Indonesia and Portugal began talks last August on a proposal by Indonesian President B.J. Habibie to grant wide-ranging autonomy to East Timor.

"Our preference would be for an arrangement where East Timor would have a higher degree of autonomy but remain legally part of Indonesia," Downer said.

"On the other hand, if in the end it proves impossible for an autonomy package to be sold to the people of East Timor ... then presumably East Timor will chart its own future as an independent state," he said. "We would see that as a second-best outcome, but on the other hand we would obviously have to live with that."

Downer said that Australia had informed Jakarta of its new position, which he described as a significant shift in policy from Canberra's long-held position of supporting the status quo in East Timor.

"It (the East Timor question) is an enormous cost to them (Indonesia), not just financially, not just in terms of human lives, but also in terms of their standing in the international community," he said.

"I don't think there is a better path for them than the one we have proposed," he said.

In Jakarta, officials regretted Australia's new stance, arguing that it would only complicate efforts to reach an internationally acceptable resolution.

"We are concerned and deeply regret that the Australian government has changed its policy on East Timor," the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ghaffar Fadyl, told The Jakarta Post.

"This decision prejudges the ongoing negotiations between Indonesia and Portugal under the auspices of the United Nations which recently had shown some progress," he said.

"And furthermore it will have an adverse effect on the search for a just, comprehensive and internationally acceptable solution to the problem."

Separately, Minister/State Secretary Akbar Tandjung reiterated the government's stance that its plan to grant special autonomy to East Timor was the final solution to the question.

"The autonomy that we would give East Timor is the same that we give to others," Akbar said after a meeting with President B.J. Habibie at Merdeka Palace.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas is on an overseas trip and could not be reached for comment.

Separately, Armed Forces (ABRI) Chief of Territorial Affairs Lt. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said ABRI fully supported the special autonomy option for East Timor as a settlement to the problem.

"If Australia has changed its stance we would need to study its new position," Susilo said. (prb/rms)