East Timorese PM attacks Australia
East Timorese PM attacks Australia
Jill Jolliffe, Agence France-Presse, Darwin
East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri launched a freewheeling attack on the Australian government Monday saying it had shown "a lack of seriousness and commitment" in maritime talks with his new nation.
Speaking at an oil conference in the northern capital of Darwin, Alkatiri said negotiations with Australia on better sharing billions of dollars in oil and gas resources under the Timor Sea had so far failed.
"The outlook after the first round of negotiations in April is quite hopeless," he said.
"We do not claim these resources because we are poor; we claim them because it is our international legal right" he told a conference here.
"We fought for a generation for our independence and will do the same for our economic independence," he said.
The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of bullying one of the world's poorest countries by claiming ownership of the oil-rich continental shelf two-thirds of the way across the Timor Sea.
East Timor wants the border drawn midway between the two and Alkatiri said Monday such a change would be worth an additional US$12 billion in revenue for his country over the "next generation", compared to $4.0 billion under the existing arrangement.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the BBC the accusations were "emotional claptrap which is being pumped up by left-wing NGOs."
Alkatiri has retaliated to what he sees as Australian intransigence by stalling on a March 2003 agreement for a $3.5 billion liquefied natural gas project in the Greater Sunrise field.
It lies 80 percent outside the Timor Sea development area agreed between the two countries in a deal which provides East Timor with 90 percent of the revenues on the remaining 20 percent of the field.
The Timorese leader has refused to send the agreement to parliament for ratification until Australia agrees to accelerate negotiations on the maritime boundary.
Clare Martin, chief minister of the Labor-run Northern Territory government which hosted the conference, proposed an unexpected solution to the deadlock on Monday.
"The downside of not negotiating is simply that Sunrise will not be developed" she said."There go the jobs, there go the revenues, there go the profits".
Martin said instead the two sides should "separate the issue of maritime boundaries from the possible revenue and the revenue split.
"Australia and East Timor can go back to the royalties negotiating table and find a more generous revenue split that would apply only to Sunrise," she said.
Her proposal angered federal government representative Warren Entsch, who said the Northern Territory chief had acted out of turn.
"Rather than raising it as a one-off suggestion at a public forum, she should have prepared a written submission and sent it to the government first," he asserted.