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."