Australia's East Timor stand comes at a cost

Australia's East Timor stand comes at a cost

By Trevor Datson

CANBERRA (Reuters): A cartoon kangaroo, its pouch crammed with
thousands of East Timorese, is a telling image of the financial
and political cost of Australia's newly adopted role as a
significant player in Asia.

The cartoon in the last Friday edition of The Australian, the
country's influential national newspaper, illustrates the costly
flip side of Canberra's leadership in the East Timor crisis.

"We're probably going to have to put huge amounts of money
into East Timor over the next two to three years just to rebuild
the infrastructure," said Prof. John Ingleson, international
relations expert at the University of New South Wales.

Or, as a U.S. diplomat in Canberra put it: "If you wanna play,
you gotta pay".

Australia, not traditionally a country that has raised its
head over the foreign policy parapet, has emerged as one of the
most vociferous critics of Indonesia's failure to clamp down on
the pro-Jakarta militia who have laid East Timor to waste.

Australia will lead an 8,000-strong multinational force to
East Timor, where militiamen have killed thousands since an Aug.
30 vote in favor of independence from Indonesia.

The mission, which is endorsed by the United Nations but
largely orchestrated by Australia, is expected to move into the
bloodied territory at the weekend.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said last Friday his
toughening stance towards Jakarta reflected a new assertive
foreign policy profile for Australia in the Asian region.

"This is Australia playing an intelligent, appropriate, firm
but fully participatory role in the affairs of the region. We are
big enough, and economically strong enough, to play a
constructive, positive leadership role," Howard said.

Australia's new assertiveness represents something of a
backflip. Canberra has long been Jakarta's closest Western ally
and was the only Western power to recognize Indonesian
sovereignty in East Timor.

When former colonial power Portugal pulled out of the
territory in 1975 and Indonesian troops marched in uninvited to
take their place, the then Australian government of prime
minister Gough Whitlam condoned the action.

The 210 million-strong Indonesian nation is Australia's
closest neighbor, and successive Australian governments have
preferred appeasement to confrontation with Jakarta despite
continuous reports of human rights abuses in East Timor.

Liberal-National coalition leader Howard has already paid some
of the diplomatic price for taking the moral high ground.

"Our relations are going to be rocky for the next year or two
because there are significant numbers of Indonesians who feel
we've been too vociferous, that we've been preaching, and here we
go again, white Australians jumping up and down," Ingleson said.

Jakarta last Thursday canceled a four-year-old bilateral
defense cooperation pact, and Australian companies have begun
winding down operations in Indonesia in the face of threats and
anti-Australian protests.

More worryingly, Australian troops have been singled out as a
legitimate target by pro-Jakarta militia groups. Australian
newspapers featured pictures of Indonesians carrying placards
saying: "Australian soldiers, welcome to East Timor. Graves have
been prepared for you! Rest in Hell".

Howard and Defense Minister John Moore have made soothing
noises towards Jakarta but this is too little, too late, believes
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian. The real damage
was done by Australia's past temerity towards Jakarta.

"Our catastrophic bungling and miscalculations concerning
Timor mean that our national situation is going to be, during the
next 10 or 20 years, fundamentally different from what we
expected," Sheridan wrote in last Friday's The Australian.

Timor will be heavily aid-dependent "more or less forever,"
Sheridan said, and Australia has "an absolute responsibility to
provide the lion's share of that aid".

Not only that, UN troops -- the majority Australian -- will
need to remain in East Timor for years, at an estimated cost of
A$500 million (US$325 million) a year.

Ultimately, Canberra has to work hard to mend fences with
Jakarta or risk a militarization of Indonesia that would threaten
security in the region, Ingleson said.

"My view is that it's important that Australia keeps its eye
on the endgame, to have a civilization of Indonesian politics.
The price we'll pay in the longer term if we don't keep our eyes
on that endgame could be very high indeed."