East Timor action may harm Australia-Indonesia relations

The World Today - Thursday, 25 May , 2006 12:18:00
Reporter: Michael Rowland

ELEANOR HALL: The International Crisis Group says that in sending troops to East Timor, Australia will ramp up tensions with Indonesia.Sidney Jones, the group's Jakarta-based Director, is warning that the move will be viewed with suspicion by elements in the Indonesian military.

Ms Jones is in Washington today and she's been speaking to our Washington Correspondent, Michael Rowland.

SIDNEY JONES: I think there… it's been clear for some time that political institutions in East Timor are extremely weak and there have been tensions, both in the defence forces and the police, for some time.

So it doesn't come as that much of a surprise that we should be seeing a deterioration of the situation now. It's a tragedy, though, just given what East Timor's been through.

MICAHEL ROWLAND: Is it the case, from what you've seen from afar, of the Government not massaging those tensions as effectively as they could have in recent times?

SIDNEY JONES: I just think there's been a lot of dysfunctional operations within the security forces more generally. And it's not for want of international assistance or lack of political will in terms of East Timor's friends with the donor community.

But I just think that, again, we're dealing with a legacy of Indonesian occupation where no one was allowed to build up the kind of institutions necessary to govern a state.

MICAHEL ROWLAND: So these differences are fairly well entrenched in your view?
SIDNEY JONES: They go back to the 1950s. They go back even long before the Indonesian occupation. There were differences that stemmed from pro and anti-Portuguese positions going back before 1975.

MICAHEL ROWLAND: Australia has decided to send in troops, and there are moves to have other countries commit troops, such as Portugal.
Looking at the Australian case, if troops go in what impact would that have on the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, a fairly tense relationship at the best of times?

SIDNEY JONES: I think it's going to make the relationship with Indonesia even more difficult than it is now.
I think we've seen a cooling off of the kind of white heat that the relationship was in with the granting of asylum to the 42 Papuans.

But I think there're going to be some ultranationalists in Indonesia who see ulterior motives behind the Australian offer of assistance in East Timor, in that they may see this as a kind of hidden way that Australia is yet again establishing a foothold in the region and so on.

And I think the wounds from the INTERFET operation are still very raw in particularly the Indonesian military, as well as in some parts of the political elite.

So it won't help the Australian-Indonesian relationship. But I think that relationship has its elements of solidness anyway.And if we were moving toward a more… a less fraught relationship, I think that there are dynamics that will continue to make that relationship improve.
But this is going to be an added complication.

MICAHEL ROWLAND: How would Indonesia view all the instability in recent times in East Timor, given its history of running the place?

SIDNEY JONES: I'm sure among some elements there's a little bit of Schadenfreude, happiness at seeing the country deteriorate, and confirmation, I think, of the view that it was all about civil war anyway.

It was all about East Timorese fighting East Timorese, in the view of Indonesians. And it's… that view has been a way of virtually avoiding responsibility for the violence, and the deaths, and the human rights violations that took place before.
And to have this kind of political deterioration is, unfortunately, only going to confirm that myth.

MICAHEL ROWLAND: Just finally, are you optimistic the East Timorese can work their way through these problems and go on to establish an effective, workable democracy?

SIDNEY JONES: I don't know at this stage. And I don't think anybody can answer that question right now.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Sidney Jones, the South East Asia Director for the International Crisis Group, speaking to Michael Rowland in Washington.