Stable RI vital to Australia

Stable RI vital to Australia

By Richard Woolcott

SYDNEY: The Australia-Indonesia Agreement on Maintaining Security is an historic development in our efforts to put more substance into our most important relations with our largest, most complex, most resource-rich and most populous neighbor.

The government is to be congratulated for taking this initiative. So is the Opposition for its prompt in-principle support, as a bipartisan approach to Indonesia is essential.

Apart from the practical value of regular ministerial consultations on common security, the symbolic importance of the agreement is that it shows that the government is keeping its focus on the fundamental issue, that is the great importance to Australia of our engagement with Indonesia.

It also emphasizes to the wider Australian community that the government does not see Indonesia as a threat and that we see our future security and Indonesia's security in the region as a shared interest.

Much of the comment since the agreement was announced has focused on an alleged policy conflict between concerns about the situation in East Timor and our growing security links with the government which is occupying East Timor. While the treaty looks to promote a stable united Indonesia, and while this implies that internal disruption is undesirable, it does not cover Indonesia's internal problems in provinces such as Aceh, Irian Jaya and East Timor. It deals with external threats.

For some years now, I have been worried at the extent to which a combination of well-intentioned people with genuine concerns about the situation in East Timor and human rights in Indonesia, left-wing politicians who have not forgiven Indonesia for the destruction of the Indonesian Communist party in the upheaval of 1965, and pro-Fretilin East Timorese refugees, who have chosen to use Australia as a base for anti-Indonesian activities, have sought to stir up antagonism towards Indonesia in the wider community.

Indonesia has failed so far to win the hearts and minds of the majority of the politically conscious East Timorese. But Australia has recognized de jure Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor since 1979.

As the Prime Minister said recently, East Timor is a province of Indonesia and the problems in East Timor are essentially for the Indonesians to sort out. Portugal, the Secretary General of the UN and representatives of groups in East timor are also involved.

Eventually, an Indonesian government might agree to a greater degree of autonomy for East Timor but, as of now, the East Timor lobby should accept that the time for an act of self- determination after 20 years has passed and that demanding independence is a lost cause which raises false hopes, prolongs conflict and costs lives.

Rather, the interests of the people of East Timor would be better served by programs to reduce the military presence, to improve conditions in both East and West Timor, and in trying to promote reconciliation between alienated East Timorese and the central government.

We sometimes forget that there has never been a United Nations-supervised act of self-determination in any former Portuguese colony and there will not be one in Macao when it is integrated into China.

Given the shambles into which the Portuguese decolonization process degenerated in the early 1970s, and India's earlier incorporation of Goa, it is curious that we should have expected a more orderly process in Portugal's most distant and neglected colony.

The issue for Australia is not one of choosing between principle and expediency, or between morality and pragmatism, but it is a more complex one of achieving a proper balance between different interests. Concerns about human rights and the situation in East timor are two strands in a many sided relationship.

They are important but, as the Prime Minister has made clear, they cannot drive the relationship, or be given excessive weight in relation to other important aspects of it, such as our common security interests (which were enshrined in the treaty signed on Dec. 18), our growing economic and commercial links, including our shared support for free trade and our multilateral cooperation on matters such as disarmament, Cambodia and on a range of ASEAN issues.

This is a relationship of fundamental importance to Australia's future and our policy cannot be allowed to be held hostage by the East Timorese lobby. The Security Treaty underlines this.

Many Australians seem to think we can impose our will on Indonesia. The simple fact is that we cannot do so. Moreover, Indonesia is the major power in ASEAN and will have the support of its six ASEAN allies on regional issues such as East Timor and any perceived interference in its domestic affairs.

The main conclusion one can draw from the agreement on security is that Keating has decided to make clear to the Australian public and to Indonesia that he intends to focus on the fundamental issue; that is, on the overriding importance of a sound long-term relationship with this vast neighbor of 190 million people to our immediate north. Strengthening the relationship with Indonesia is now a cornerstone of our Asia- Pacific policy, with which other policies on specific issues need to be coordinated.

We need to recognize the great benefits Australia has derived from a stable Indonesia under its President, Soeharto. An unstable, poor, unpredictable Indonesia would be a nightmare for Australia and result in the diversion of substantial resources to increased defense expenditure. The new agreement moves us in the opposite direction and underpins our national interest in a stable, united, prosperous and peaceful Indonesia.

The writer is a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and a former ambassador to Indonesia. He is chairman of the Australia-Indonesia Institute.

-- The Weekend Australian

Window: Many Australians seem to think we can impose our will on Indonesia. The simple fact is that we cannot do so.