Australia shifts with times on East Timor issue
Australia shifts with times on East Timor issue
By John Mair
CANBERRA (Reuters): Australia's move to countenance
independence for East Timor is in keeping with its pragmatic
stand on the Indonesian-ruled territory, political analysts said.
Far from an ideological sea-change, Canberra's apparent change
of heart on Tuesday merely acknowledged a recent thaw in
Jakarta's own hardline policy on the restive province, they said.
"It is a shift, but I think it's just keeping up to date with
what's already happening," Indonesia expert Harold Crouch said of
what Canberra called a historic shift in policy.
The only Western country to recognize Indonesian sovereignty
over East Timor, Australia previously only supported autonomy for
the territory, which was integrated into Indonesia two decades
ago.
"It would be silly for Australia to be insisting there can be
no change... if the Indonesians themselves have backed away from
that position," said Crouch, of the Australian National
University.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Tuesday Canberra
would back a political settlement that held out the long-term
possibility of self-determination for the East Timorese people.
The move received a warm welcome from Jose Ramos Horta, the
East Timorese independence leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
But it prompted Jakarta to flatly deny that independence was
on its agenda. Since the downfall of autocratic President
Soeharto last May, Indonesia has said it will consider autonomy
only.
Downer said Australia's preferred option was still for an
autonomous East Timor to remain legally part of Indonesia, but it
now recognized that independence should be a long-term option.
Analysts said Australia no longer wanted to be seen as the
only Western nation supporting Jakarta's rule over East Timor.
Richard Robison, Asia Center director at Murdoch University,
said: "Australia doesn't like being seen as one of the only
countries that supports Indonesia's claim to East Timor."
Indonesia has been holding talks with East Timor's former
colonial power, Portugal, since last August in an attempt to
bring peace to the territory.
"We recognize that the new situation in Indonesia is changing
the dynamics surrounding the East Timor issue and we've made a
significant shift in policy," Downer said on Tuesday.
"The demise of the Soeharto regime, the emergence of President
Habibie and his much more constructive approach to the issue does
provide a window of opportunity and therefore I think it
appropriate that we should change our position," he added.
East Timor has proved a prickly issue for Australian
governments since the integration of East Timor into Indonesia in
1976, under the rule of Soeharto.
While the United Nations refused to recognize Indonesian
sovereignty, Australia did, and later signed treaties with
Jakarta to share the oil and gas deposits in the Timor Sea.
James Dunn, a foreign affairs specialist and former diplomat,
said the shift was historic against that background.
Dunn wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia was
belatedly "accepting the immorality of that integration,
influenced no doubt by the growing international support for the
Timorese and by changing attitudes within Indonesia itself".
The Australian shift may also be an indication that the talks
with the Timorese and Portugal may soon produce a result, and so
Australia is repositioning in readiness, Crouch said.
Australian policy -- long reviled by guerrillas in Dili -- is
now aligned with the moderate wing of East Timor's resistance.
"I would say we are on the same wavelength for the first time
in many, many years," Ramos Horta told Reuters.
The support for a substantial period of autonomy before any
move to self determination is expected to increase the odds of a
highly autonomous East Timor remaining part of Indonesia.
Downer says this would not only be more politically convenient
for Australia, but would also work against any fragmentation of
Indonesia -- a prospect that gives Canberra the shivers.