<nettime> East Timor Digest

[nettimes_digestive_system <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

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Date sent:              Thu, 16 Sep 1999 14:53:40 +1000
Via:            Helen Ester <h.ester@cqu.edu.au>
Subject:                E. Timor -

article by The Australian newspaper's foreign editor (a conservative)
would interest you. the Headline is "A holocaust of Canberra's making. The
shame we must wear down here....." 


By GREG SHERIDAN 16sep99  

THE deepening tragedy of East Timor represents the greatest catastrophe in
the history of Australian foreign policy. 

Last Saturday, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Hugh Shelton told an
Australian visitor no Australian had raised the possibility of
peacekeepers with him until 48 hours before that time. Given what we were
trying to organise, that is astonishing. 

The success of the Government in putting together a peace force this week
should not obscure one crushing fact - the holocaust in East Timor is a
direct consequence of the failure of Australian policy. 

Of course the priority now is to save East Timorese lives, but if the
Government is allowed to get away with its catastrophic mishandling of
East Timor, we will have learned nothing from the tragedy. 

The Government's main failures were three: a massive and frightening
failure of intelligence to predict what the Indonesian military would do;
a gross failure of nerve in negotiating the entry of peacekeepers in
advance with the Indonesians; and an astonishing failure to bring the US
on board at a suitable level early enough. 

The failure with the Indonesian army, the TNI, is deeply disturbing. The
Government boasts that no one understands the Indonesian military better
than Australia. It has a vast intelligence-gathering and analysis capacity
- ranging from foreign affairs to defence, to electronic eavesdropping
capacities - all dedicated to knowing what the TNI is up to. 

Yet we either did not know, or did not care, what the TNI was planning. 
Involved in this was a fundamental misreading of the character and intent
of TNI commander Wiranto. 

Our lack of influence was evident in General Wiranto's refusal to talk to
Defence Minister John Moore at a time when Wiranto was talking,
face-to-face and on the phone, to the Americans. It was the US, not us,
who turned Wiranto around on peacekeepers. We paid a heavy price for
having an inexperienced defence minister and for the ludicrous fiasco
surrounding the sacking of former defence secretary Paul Barratt. 

The second failure was not to negotiate the presence of international
peacekeepers in advance of the ballot. 

At a similar point in the at least equally difficult and momentous
Cambodian peace process, Phnom Penh leader Hun Sen was proving difficult
about the degree of UN peacekeeping involvement. His Australian
negotiating partner, Michael Costello, in a marathon and tough meeting,
told Hun Sen that if he did not agree to full UN participation, the
international community, and certainly Australia, would just walk away. At
which point, Hun Sen relented. 

Labor's Laurie Brereton has received no recognition for the fact that his
analysis in respect to peacekeepers was superior to the Government's. He
argued from the outset that the TNI could not be trusted to handle
security. 

Alexander Downer argued in the months leading up to the vote that to push
for peacekeepers would lead to the Indonesians cancelling the ballot. 

If that is so, the Government should have been prepared to wear it as a
temporary setback rather than allowing such a dangerous process to go
ahead. 

But the Government may well have misjudged its negotiating strength as
well. Being prepared to walk away is a last-ditch, but often essential,
part of effective negotiation. 

Instead the Howard Government positively argued against the idea of
peacekeepers as likely to derail the ballot process. If the US had been on
board, at a level beyond Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth, we
might have convinced Jakarta to accept peacekeepers. 

Not getting the US engaged at a really powerful level, which Canberra
thought a good thing because it meant Washington was not interfering, was
a fundamental failure of strategy. 

There comes a point at which taking a risk becomes shocking recklessness.
There is more than a small suspicion that far too much of this policy has
been a response to public opinion. The Government at crucial pressure
points took the line of least public resistance. 

This has been a bloody and appalling failure of Australian strategy and
policy.

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From: institute@igc.org
Subject: Just Back From East Timor

Institute for Public Accuracy 
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org 

Tuesday, September 14, 1999 

JUST BACK FROM EAST TIMOR

Despite Indonesia's agreement to an international force in East Timor, the
violence there continues. The following people, most of whom were
UN-accredited observers for the late August vote, have recently returned
from East Timor and are available for interviews: 

BARBARA NASH, bjnash@juno.com, http://www.etan.org A UN-accredited
observer with the International Federation for East Timor, Nash just
returned on September 8. Nash is a teacher and grandmother. 

JEROME HANSEN, jeromehansen@hotmail.com Hansen, who has also done election
monitoring in Sri Lanka and Cambodia, is currently a graduate student in
conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University. 

MIRIAM YOUNG and ANDREW WELLS, apcjp@igc.org, http://www.apcjp.org
Associated with the Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace, Young and
Wells led an ecumenical delegation to East Timor. 

ELKE ENDER and MARIN GERSKOVIC, elke@erols.com Volunteers with the United
Nations Mission in East Timor, Ender is a graduate student, Gerskovic is a
former Yugoslavian diplomat. 

BONNIE LING Ling, who is from Athens, Georgia, recently returned from East
Timor. 

CHRIS LUNDRY Lundry is a doctoral student studying East Timor at Arizona
State University. 

WILLIAM SEAMAN, carriea@mail.e-z.net Seaman was in East Timor for more
than a month. 

DIANE FARSETTA Farsetta, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, returned from
East Timor on September 10. 

MARK SALZER, http://www.etan.org Salzer is coordinator of the East Timor
Action Network (ETAN) in Boston.  He recently returned from his second
trip to East Timor. 

BEN TERRALL, http://www.etan.org Terrall, director of the East Timor
Research and Relief Project, is San Francisco coordinator of ETAN. 

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:  Sam
Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

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From: Nermeen Shaikh <nermeens@AsiaSoc.org>
Subject: RE: <nettime> East Timor Digest (list, links, essays, hacks)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 12:52:03 -0400

I would like to bring to your attention a Special Report the Asia Society
in New York has prepared on East Timor.  It is available at: 
http://www.asiasource.org/news/at_mp_02.cfm?newsid=86

Please distribute this URL to all those who are interested in the issue. 
This Special Report not only includes annotated articles by some of the
most prominent commentators on East Timor (John Pilger, for example) but
also a list of news sources, links, etc. 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Nermeen Shaikh (Ms)

----------------------------------
Nermeen Shaikh
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
t: (212)327-9291
f: (212)744-8825
e: nermeens@asiasoc.org
http://www.asiasociety.org
http://www.asiasource.org
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