Australia's plans may make E. Timor 'a Haiti'

Australia's plans may make E. Timor 'a Haiti'

David Fickling, Guardian News Service, Sydney, Australia

East Timor risks becoming "another Haiti" because of an attempt
by Australia to exploit offshore oil and gas reserves between the
two countries, according to its president, Xanana Gusmao.

Gusmao, who led East Timor's fight for independence from
Indonesia, said the country would be at risk if Australian plans
to exploit oil and gas fields claimed by Dili went ahead.

"It makes the difference to our future," he said. "We would
not like to be a failed state. Without all this we will be
another Haiti, another Liberia, another Solomon Islands, and we
do not want that," he told the Guardian.

An Australian Green party senator, Bob Brown, has accused
Canberra of blackmail and robbery in its attempts to take control
of two slices of the US$30 billion Timor Sea reserves, while
demonstrators in Dili this week likened the claim to the 1975
Indonesian invasion of their country.

Gusmao said the reserves could make the difference between
viability and failure for East Timor. "How can we prevent poverty
if we don't have money? How can we reduce disease, how can we
stabilize the country, how can we strengthen the democratic
process, how can we strengthen tolerance ... if we don't have
money?" he asked.

The president said international donors were putting pressure
on his government to exploit the reserves but had not offered any
help in the dispute with Canberra.

With much of its infrastructure destroyed by violence that
accompanied its 1999 independence referendum, East Timor is one
of the poorest countries in the world. One in three people is
dead by the age of 40, more than half of adults are illiterate,
only one in three houses has electricity and one in five has
drinking water.

The Timor Sea reserves, which lie in an area where the sea
boundary between Australia and East Timor has never been settled,
are its greatest hope for development.

Dili claims its long-term tax revenues from the area would
rise from $4 billion to $12 billion if an equitable boundary were
drawn, but Australia has already started exploiting several
disputed fields.

Brown, who will go to Dili next week to observe the next round
of boundary negotiations, said Canberra's behavior was immoral
and short-sighted.

"We have got the richest country in our region robbing the
poorest," he said. "People in East Timor had thought that
Australia was their only friend in the region, but now they
discover that the arm we put around their back was picking their
pockets."

Protests outside the Australian embassy in Dili this week drew
nearly 1,000 demonstrators.