Australia 'went on war footing over E. Timor'

Australia 'went on war footing over E. Timor'

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters): UN-sanctioned warships escorting
troops to East Timor in 1999 went on full battle alert after two
Indonesian submarines began shadowing the fleet, a New Zealand
defense expert said on Friday.

David Dickens, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at
Victoria University in Wellington, said Indonesian combat
aircraft also conducted "aggressive probing" of the Australian-
led force called INTERFET (International Force in East Timor) on
its way to East Timor.

"These tactics raised questions about the intentions of the
(Indonesian military). Various INTERFET ships went to action
stations during these incidents," Dickens quoted an unidentified
senior INTERFET officer as saying.

His claims, which he says are based on interviews with senior
Australian officers in INTERFET headquarters, operational
officers and New Zealand commanders, are contained in an article
about to be published in the journal Contemporary Southeast Asia.

Dickens said Indonesia's surprise forward deployment and
"aggressive" use of submarines and fighters saw Australia place
its defense forces on its highest military readiness for the
first 10 days of the East Timor operation in September 1999.

He said senior Australian officers had told him that
Australian F-111 fighters were "bombed up" under worst-case
planning and were ready to knock out military communications
links on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

The 10-day military standoff from Sept. 20-30 ended when
senior Australian officers confronted their Indonesian
counterparts with intelligence showing them that their submarines
had been detected, Dickens said.

Australia led the UN-sanctioned force to East Timor in 1999
after Jakarta-backed militia went on a rampage in response to a
vote by East Timorese for independence from Indonesia.

Relations between the neighbors were severely strained by the
East Timor crisis but have recovered. Indonesia's President
Abdurrahman Wahid is due on Monday to become the first leader of
that country to make an official visit to Australia in 26 years.

A spokesman for Australian Defense Minister Peter Reith
declined to comment on Dickens' claims.

"We are not going to comment specifically on operational
matters and on state's of readiness at various times," the
spokesman said.

"The INTERFET operation was conducted with full agreement and
cooperation of the Indonesian government and the Indonesian
defense forces. Indeed the operation could not have been a
success without that co-operation."

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Dickens said Australian
INTERFET officers viewed the Indonesian deployment of submarines
and fighters as a real threat on a number of fronts.

"There was a definite concern about naval attack from the
submarines and all the other things," Dickens said.
"But the real thing that worried them was that the submarines
could have been used to slip in at night nearby the fleet and
offload special forces who might have gone out and sunk one of
the ships while it was in Dili harbor or just outside."

"They regarded the most plausible threat was that kind of
ambiguous attack...because it is quite hard to protect against."

Dickens said that, as part of Australia's readiness for any
level of Indonesian aggression, fighters were ready to hit
Indonesian military communications outside Jakarta.

"The bombing-up of the F-111s was part of the overall raising
of the whole of the Australian defense force in northern
Australia to the highest levels of readiness, so that if there
was any form of attack they would respond," Dickens said.

"I was told that by...the people that were actually going to
do it," he said.

Dickens said such an attack would only have been launched in
response to a major attack by Indonesian forces.

"A big attack would get a big response. It would have been
proportional," he said.

Dickens cited New Zealand Navy Chief of Staff Rear Admiral
Peter McHaffie as confirming that the New Zealand frigate
Canterbury had "detected an unidentified submarine contact" near
East Timor as New Zealand troops sailed to the town of Suai.

He said McHaffie indicated the Indonesian T209 submarines
"operated with greater tactical flare than had been anticipated".

At one stage one of the submarines disappeared, sparking an
intense search by INTERFET aircraft and warships, said Dickens.
"That was real time. It was high pressure stuff," he said.

"No one knows why the (Indonesian military) were moving their
submarines and aircraft up. But the speculation is that it was a
reconnaissance and forward testing of what INTERFET were doing."