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.