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."