Timor-Leste: Annan nomeia veterano da ONU da Índia como o novo Representante Especial
Centro de Notícias da ONU
6 Dezembro 2006 – O Secretário-Geral Kofi Annan nomeou um veterano da Índia e das operações da ONU em Timor-Leste como o seu novo Representante Especial para a pequena nação do Sudeste Asiático, que anteriormente foi sacudida este ano por violência atribuída a diferenças entre as regiões do leste e do oeste.
Atul Khare, que serviu com a UNMISET de Junho de 2002 até à sua finalização em Maio de 2005, primeiro como Chefe de Pessoal e mais tarde como Vice-Representante do Secretário-Geral, Sr. Annan sucede a Sukehiro Hasegawa do Japão, cuja nomeação expirou em 30 de Setembro.
Antes de se juntar à ONU, o Sr. Khare foi membro do Serviço de Estrangeiros da Índia, ocupando cargos como Vice-Alto-Comissário nas Mauricias, Conselheiro da Missão da Ìndia na ONU e Encarregado de Assuntos no Senegal, onde esteve também creditado para o Mali, Mauritânia, Gâmbia, Guiné-Bissau e Cabo Verde.
No Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros em Nova Delhi, ocupou os postos de Chefe de Gabinete do Sectretário dos Estrangeiros e Director da Divisão da ONU. Desde 2005, o Sr. Khare serviu como Director do Centro Nehru e Ministro (Cultura) da Alta-Comissão Indiana em Londres.
Nascido em 1959, o Sr. Khare é Bachelor de Medicina e Bachelor de Cirurgia (com honras) pelo Instituto de Ciências Médicas de Toda a Índia, e tem o grau de mestrado em Administração de Negócios e Liderança pela Universidade de Southern Queensland, Australia, e um Diploma Avançado (com Distinção) em Francês pela Escola de Línguas da Defesa Indiana.
A crise em Timor-Leste,que a ONU guiou para a independência em 2002 depois de ter votado a ruptura da Indonésia em 1999, irrompeu depois do despedimento de 600 soldados em greve, um terço das forças armadas, com a violência que se seguiu a fazer pelo menos 37 mortes e levando 155,000 pessoas, 15 por cento da população total, a sair das suas casas.
Em Agosto o Conselho de Segurança criou a expandida Missão Integrada da ONU para Timor-Leste (UNMIT) para ajudar a restaurar a ordem no país e a apoiar (a realização) das próximas eleições presidenciais e parlamentares no próximo ano. Correntemente a ONU tem somente 460 polícias no terreno, de um total 1,608 conforme mandatado.
Abnriga também observadores militares e é apoiada por 102 civis internacionais, 222 civis locais e 34 Voluntários da ONU.
***
The Age
A ONU nomeia o representante em Timor-Leste
Dezembro 7, 2006 - 12:44PM
A missão da ONU em Timor-Leste tem finalmente um novo chefe, pondo fim a meses de especulação.
O Secretário-geral da ONU Kofi Annan nomeou o diplomata veterano Indiano Atul Khare para o posto de Representante Especial da pequena nação.
A nova missão tem estado sem responsável desde o fim de Setembro depois do antigo presidente de 62 anos de Cabo Verde António Macarenhas Monteiro ter sido por pouco tempo nomeado para o posto, somente para aparentemente mudar de ideias.
Khare, que tem servido como director do Centro Nehru e ministro (cultura) da Alta-Comissão Indiana em Londres desde o ano passado, enfrenta uma tarefa dantesca para ajudar Timor-Leste a recuperar de meses de violência.
A capital de Timor-Leste continua a ser perturbada por violência esporádica, quando se aproximam as eleições nacionais no próximo ano.
O Dr Khare tem experiência prévia em Timor-Leste, servindo na antiga missão da UNMISET de Junho de 2002 até Maio de 2005, primeiro como chefe do pessoal depois como Vice-Representante Especial da missão. A ONU guiou Timor-Leste para a independência em 2002 depois dos seus cidadãos terem votado por grande margem pela independência da Indonésia em 1999.
Contudo, irrompeu fresca violência em Abril depois de um terço das forças armadas terem sido despedidas, matando dúzias de pessoas e obrigando mais de 150,000 pessoas a saírem das suas casas.
O Dr Khare, cuja nomeação foi assinalada por Kofi Annan no mês passado, substitui o Japonês Sukehiro Hasegawa que liderou a antiga missão da ONU em 2004. A sua colocação terminou no fim de Setembro.
O Dr Khare entrou para o Serviço de Estrangeiros Indiano em 1984, e serviu nas Maurícias, Nova Iorque, Tailândia, Senegal e França.
Tem graduações em medicina e cirurgia, com mestrados na Universidade de Southern Queensland em administração de negócios e liderança.
***
Annan nomeia Indiano como novo enviado em Timor-Leste
Fonte: Xinhua
O Secretário-Geral da ONU Kofi Annan nomeou Atul Khare da Ìndia como seu representante especial para Timor-Leste ae responsável da Missão Integrada da ONU em Timor-Leste (UNMIT), anunciou hoje, Quarta-feira a ONU.
Khare substitui o Sr. Sukehiro Hasegawa do Japão, cuja nomeação expirou em 30 de Setembro.
O novo enviado serviu com a Missão de Apoio da ONU a Timor-Leste de Junho de 2002 até ao seu término em Maio de 2005, primeiro como chefe de pessoal e depois como vice-representante especial do secretário-geral.
Antes de se juntar à ONU, Khare foi membro do Serviço dos Estrangeiros Indiano.
Em Agosto, o Conselho de Segurança criou a UNMIT para ajudar a restaurar a ordem no país e a apoiar as eleições presidenciais e parlamentares no próximo ano. A UNMIT correntemente tem somente 460 polícias no terreno, de um total de 1,608 com o mandato completado.
Abriga ainda observadores militares e é apoiada por 102 civis internacionais, 222 civis locais e 34 voluntários da ONU.
.
sexta-feira, dezembro 08, 2006
Finalmente nomeado. Atul Atul Khare novo RESG da UN. Benvindo Atul!
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SEEMS THAT AFTER ALL THE ALLEGATIONS OF BEING MARXIST, THE LEFT DON'T THINK SO....NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT.
Taming the “Banana Republic”: The United States in East Timor
By Ben Moxham(*)
20th January 2005
In March last year, a USAID funded children’s book released in East Timor
provoked outrage. “Faty and Noi’s Adventure to Parliament,” was produced by
the International Republican Institute (IRI) to teach Timorese kids about
democracy. All the characters in the book were drawn as monkeys, including
the Government leadership, who appeared on the front cover like a line-up of
suspected criminal apes.
“This is definitely an attempt to humiliate us,” said Lu-Olo, the Fretilin
party head of Parliament, who has spent most of his life dodging
US-manufactured bullets as an independence guerilla. “We may be a small
country with many poor people but we still have our dignity.”(1)
Parliament passed a resolution condemning the book and it was withdrawn, but
not without a very public catfight. The responsible IRI project staffer
quarreled with President Xanana Gusmao – the revered resistance leader - for
withdrawing his support for the publication. IRI complained that the books
had cost $15,000 to print and banning it was a denial of their right to free
speech.
IRI claimed that they had consulted broadly on the book, a claim the
government contests. Regardless of where the truth lies, commentators are
right to point out that “monkey-gate” was a convenient political distraction
from corruption allegations thrown at the Government at the time. Yet the
racist and condescending tone of the book and brash IRI response is typical
of US actions in Timor and around the world.(2)
The monkey book is just a small result of the US foreign policy goal of
“expanding democracy and free markets” around the world, as the USAID
website puts it. While this policy may be dying on the battlefields of Iraq,
a fragile East Timor - emerging from its bloody transition to independence
in 1999 - has been an “open slate” for US political, economic and military
designs.
“Whistling in the Dark”
In Timor, USAID bankrolls most of the non-government media and many civil
society organisations working on legal reform, media training and policy
research.(3) It is however, the “democracy promotion” agencies funded by the
quasi-US governmental National Endowment of Democracy (NED) that have
attracted the most controversy. The IRI and the National Democratic
Institute (NDI) – the respective foreign policy wings of the US Republican
and Democrat Parties – are the key tools in containing and directing the
political agenda in countries, such as Timor, undergoing “transition”.(4)
At best, this US mission to spread democracy can be “dangerous whistling in
the dark”, as the historian Eric Hobsbawm describes it. For Hobsbawm, it can
be a naïve and self-interested attempt at imposing a US ballot-box brand of
democracy that has little local resonance.(5) At worst, it is political
meddling. It was NED groups that infamously stirred up the failed coup in
Venezuela and the successful one in Haiti.(6) IRI is also openly hostile
towards Hun Sen’s government in another “reconstructing” country,
Cambodia.(7) While nothing as confrontational or conspiratorial is being
hatched in Timor, things are drifting this way.
IRI, in particular, has been training the country’s fledgling political
parties in the tricks of the trade. Through circumstances both deliberate
and coincidental, they have ended up helping only the Washington-friendly
opposition.(8) While IRI sees itself as “life support” for the country’s
opposition, the ruling party, Fretilin, see it as interfering. In response,
they enacted a repressive and open ended immigration law banning foreigners
from “engaging in political activities”. Many see it as a direct response to
IRI activities. Fretilin even threatened to deport IRI staff under the law
after IRI sponsored an opinion poll that Fretilin felt was worded to
deliberately undermine them. An interview with IRI for this article yielded
nothing but “off the record” comments, but it’s safe to say that they view
Fretilin through the paranoid haze of Cold War goggles.
For the opposition parties it is a tricky bind. Despite reservations they
may have with the US, USAID are offering them needed resources at the same
time the Fretilin Government is trying to silence them. A prominent example
was the suspension of 32 civil servants for attending a meeting of the rival
Partido Democratica (Democratic Party) in Suai district. They were accused
of skipping work, even though the meeting was held on the weekend.
Many individual USAID projects are harmless and sometimes sorely needed
e.g., NDI’s lobbying to ensure civilian control of the military. But step
back and what emerges is a US political hegemony over civil society, spread
by USAID’s cheque book. From generous project grants to prominent positions
in USAID-backed NGOs, the US is grooming a set of domestic political elites
and subtly co-opting and depoliticising the radicalism of the independence
movement.
In the fortress-like US embassy, now appropriately located in the former
Indonesian governor’s house, an “Unnamed Diplomatic Source” discusses the
underlying tension between the US and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri’s
Government. “Timor is at a crossroads... I feel that Alkatiri is trying to
follow the Malaysian model of development,” with the attendant “weakening of
democratic institutions,” he comments.
Yet Alkatiri’s Mahathir-style posturing is mostly just that.(9) The
Government is on the tight leash of an international donor community that
continues to wield quasi-sovereign power. However, even with its limited
space for manoeuvre, the Government has frustrated US attempts at
influencing policy, especially in the justice sector which the US views as
incredibly weak. If the stand off continues, comments the Diplomatic Source,
“We will direct our resources into other areas such as building civil
society and increased support for IRI and NDI”.
The Structural Adjustment of Independence
The irony of promoting democracy in Timor is that all major decisions since
independence have been made by the US, other international donors and the
Bretton Woods institutions. State utilities have been partially privatized.
The IMF effectively controls a non-interventionist Central Bank. The entire
economy has been thrown open with all tariffs, (save on luxury goods) set at
six per cent. And the Government, restricted to 17,000 staff under
structural adjustment-style conditionalities and a miserly $75 million
budget, is unable to meaningfully govern beyond the city limits of Dili. The
Ministry of Agriculture for example, has an annual budget of just $1.5
million, yet 85 per cent of the country relies on agriculture for their
livelihood.(10) In contrast, the former Indonesian occupiers had 33,000
people on the government payroll managing $135 million in 1997. That was
just to administer what was then a distant province, not a nation-state.
Radical liberalisation of the economy combined with the inflationary
pressures of a well funded international donor elite has rendered most
Timorese “economically unviable”. With just under half of its 925,000
inhabitants living in “extreme poverty” as defined by the UN, Timor is
already the poorest nation in Asia and getting worse. For each of the last
two years the economy has shrunk by two per cent and a further decline of
one percent this financial year is predicted.(11) At the same time, the
population has grown by 17.5 percent since 2001, adding at least 15,000
people to the workforce each year. Even the IMF concedes that these
pressures are, “reinforcing widespread poverty and serious
underemployment.”(12)
With the national budget already facing serious shortfalls, it’s hard for
the Government to get the courage to deviate from donor policy orthodoxy –
especially as donors fund a little under half of it. “Put bluntly”, opines a
US Congress memo on activities in Timor, “it seems likely that assistance
levels will decline if East Timor’s government pursues economic or budgetary
policies which were unacceptable to donors”.(13)
At the Altar of Private Sector Growth
At the May 2004 donors meeting the IMF summarized donor’s solutions to
Timor’s economic malaise: “Development of a dynamic private sector is key to
attaining higher economic growth, generating increased employment
opportunities, and alleviating poverty”.(14) It’s a pervasive and
unchallenged idea in Timor.
Looking at Timor, with its crumbling roads, UNHCR-tarpaulin covered markets,
low-skilled workforce and comparatively high-waged economy, talk of creating
‘enabling environments’ for the private sector or attracting foreign direct
investment (FDI) looks like a dance to the rain gods. “The start up costs
here are 30% higher and the operating costs are 50% higher than the rest of
the region,” says Jose Goncalves, the US government-funded senior investment
advisor with the Ministry of Development and Environment. “There aren’t too
many areas for investment in this country,” he adds, after a long pause.
Low levels of investment are a common story among the least developing
countries (LDCs). Indeed, according to the United Nations Commission on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the LDCs in Asia experienced a decline in
annual FDI from a 1995 to 1999 average of $786 million down to $339.7
million by 2002.(15)
Yet the US continues to push heavily for foreign private sector-led growth.
It is funding a number of studies on FDI promotion, agribusiness
development, a finance sector framework and developing a land law regime
friendly to the private sector.(16) Our Unnamed Diplomatic Source sees this
last policy as Timor’s only option to attract investors. “The government has
tons of land, about two thirds of the country,” he proclaims, “some of which
of course is tied up in Adat (traditional title). This is one incentive they
can offer. They can give out land for FDI.”
Assuming this strategy succeeds and that whole villages don’t mind being
thrown off their land, will it actually be beneficial? UNCTAD in their
latest report on LDCs, has asked why, “there is no guarantee that export
expansion will lead to a form of economic growth that is inclusive.”(17)
UNCTAD’s former secretary-general Rubens Ricupero, blames what he labels
“enclave-led growth” and paints a classic picture of colonial capitalism: “A
relatively rich commodity-exporting sector, well connected to roads and
ports and supported by ancillary services, existed side by side with large
undeveloped hinterlands where the majority of the population lived.”(18) If
donor plans for building an export processing zone (EPZ) in the town of
Baucau happen, Ricupero’s description is probably the best Timor could hope
for. However, the “build it and they will come” faith behind EPZ promotion
is a gamble that has failed in the LDCs.
Yet with a decent flow of oil revenue expected over the next twenty years,
Timor has one chance to “cross the desert” of underdevelopment, as Goncalves
puts it.(19) It is a critical choice. Does Timor gamble on EPZs, or instead,
use the revenue to invest in health and education, strengthen rural
communities and economies and create mutually beneficial linkages between
the domestic and international markets? The answer may seem obvious, but is
it even a choice Timor has the political space to make?
Baseless Rumours?
The grandeur of US plans to spread liberal democracy and capitalism over the
world is bettered only by Pentagon-delusions of achieving global “full
spectrum dominance”. Indeed, the two crusades are intimately and
contradictorily linked, as the residents of Fallujah can attest.
While Timor isn’t being bombed into freedom by the US, the frequent visits
of US warships and marines to Dili firmly place Timor under the US military
umbrella. It’s a tricky bind for PM Alkatiri. The US military presence
reinforces an already distasteful US “democracy promotion” agenda, yet also
provides a perceived counter to Indonesia, which looms large in all of
Timor’s foreign policy calculations. Dili recognises their vulnerability
towards their former occupiers across the border. Jakarta would only have to
block imports of instant noodles into Dili to bring them down.
But Uncle Sam could be staying for more than just the weekend. One of the
most persistent rumours in Dili is US plans to build a military base on the
back of Atauro Island, about 20km north of Dili. The official US response is
denial: “We have no interest in Timor whatsoever – zero,” responds the
Unnamed Diplomatic Source, making a zero sign with his left hand.
Many well-placed government sources privately contradict this, as does the
US’ own historical strategic interest in the submarine passages lying North
of Timor. This was a key reason for the US giving Suharto the green light to
invade Timor in 1975. The US needed the “the continuing good will of the
Suharto Government,” to guarantee “American security interests,” writes John
Taylor. “Paramount in these interests was the use of the Ombai-Wetar Straits
for deep-sea submarine passage.”(20) These straits have increased their
significance for the Pentagon since the recent identification of Southeast
Asia as a zone of “instability”. They are also critical trade routes,
especially for Australia(21) and New Zealand who are also rumoured to be
investigating setting up facilities.
Their Freedom and Ours
For Timor’s Independence Day on May 20th, 2004, the US navy ship the USS
Vandegrift anchored off the coast of Dili to pay a diplomatic visit.
Republican-appointed Ambassador Joseph Rees commented on why the ship’s
presence was important: “Timor Leste wants a close relationship with the US,
not only because they believe it enhances their security, but also because
they share our commitment to freedom and democracy”.(22)
But the hundreds of Timorese that protested two months earlier outside the
old US embassy on the first anniversary of the US occupation of Iraq didn’t
share Rees’ idea of freedom or democracy. And nor does the average Timorese
who has long lamented the US backing of Indonesian atrocities committed
against them.
One body that could have deterred or perhaps punished such genocide – had it
been formed earlier – is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Created in
1999, it is designed to catch those committing crimes against humanity who
would otherwise slip through the gaps of politically compromised national
jurisdictions. This is exactly the problem currently facing both the
Indonesian and Timorese legal systems responding to the Indonesian military
orchestrated murder of an estimated 1,500 Timorese, the forced deportation
of two-thirds of the population and the destruction of 75% of the country’s
infrastructure in 1999.(23)
The US has waged a campaign to undermine the ICC. It has been twisting the
arms of dozens of poor and weak nations into signing Article 98
“non-surrender” agreements committing them to never handing over US citizens
to the ICC. In the case of Timor, the US didn’t twist Dili’s arm, they broke
it. “If Timor hadn’t signed those agreements then we would have pulled out
any military from here,” comments the Diplomatic Source. US Secretary of
State Colin Powell went further, writing to the incoming Government in April
2002 urging them to sign the agreement, otherwise the US Congress would find
it difficult to continue giving aid.(24) According to diplomatic sources in
New York, the US even engaged the Timorese government in some “special
coaching”, as Anett Keller puts it, “during the weeks preceding East Timor’s
signature to the bilateral agreement”.(25) In June 2002, they even threw a
tantrum at the UN Security Council, threatening to not replace their three
UN Mission for East Timor (UNMISET) members if they couldn’t secure immunity
from the ICC for all UN peacekeeping missions.
The Timorese quickly buckled. Timor’s strongly pro-US Foreign Minister Jose
Ramos Horta, perhaps needing US backing for a suspected stab at the UN’s
highest job, signed the ICC “Article 98” exemption and a Status of Forces
Agreement (SOFA) on October 1st 2002. One year later, Timor’s Council of
Ministers approved this “Article 98” with the United States, binding East
Timor to never surrender or transfer, “current or former government
officials, employees (including contractors), or military personnel or
nationals” of the United States to the International Criminal Court.(26)
Forcing a nation that barely survived genocide into their campaign to
undermine the ICC is a truly tragic example of who calls the shots in the
world’s newest nation.
In addition, the SOFA gives diplomatic immunity to US military personnel in
Timor from any criminal matter and an economic agreement between the two
governments exempts US staff from paying tax, bothering with immigration
requirements, makes their property “inviolable” and makes them immune from
civil suit. For all the US complaints about the weak rule of law in Timor’s
justice sector, US citizens seem to be exempt from every law in the country.
The Quiet Americans (27)
Pressured on the issue of military bases, the Diplomatic Source adds, “Timor
is just not a factor in the strategic thinking of the United States. It is
really a question as to what Timor becomes. If it is a failed state like
PNG, then it has no importance to the United States - we’ll walk away. If it
is a prosperous and democratic state then it could have important symbolic
value for the region, ‘look here, Timor did it, so can you’.” But which of
those options are US actions contributing to?
Perhaps Timorese elites can avoid failed-statehood by walking the fine line
between placating local constituents while following the prescriptions of
their international overlords. But there is a more likely scenario. Imagine
an anxious Prime Minister Alkatiri, at his office desk, painstakingly
searching for more funds in his flimsy national budget to silence the din of
angry protestors outside his window. Yet, further limiting his policy
options would also be the groundwork laid by the Quiet Americans: no control
over a dysfunctional economy, “Venezuela”-style moves by the IRI, and that
US warship with its 1800 marines sitting out in the Dili Harbour. On deck
unnamed US officials are no doubt muttering something about yet another
“failed state”.
(*) Ben Moxham (ben@focusweb.org) works for Focus
on the Global South (www.focusweb.org), an activist
research and advocacy organisation based in Bangkok. An earlier edit of this
article was first published in the January edition of Z Magazine.
Notes:
(1) Timor Post, “IRI book an offence to the people of this country”, March
16, 2004.
(2) Prior to the recent recall referendum in Venezuela, a puppet show was
held in the US embassy in Caracas depicting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
as a monkey. It seems that along with re-embracing the term “empire”, the US
is also renewing its license to use the coloniser’s insults that go with it:
See Tariq Ali, “Why He Crushed the Oligarchs: The Importance of Hugo
Chavez”, Counterpunch, August 16, 2004, available at
www.counterpunch.org accessed August 2004.
(3) For an overview of USAID activities in Timor, see La’o Hamutuk Bulletin
“US Government Assistance and Coffee”, Vol 3. No. 2-3, April 2002 available
at www.etan.org/lh accessed August 2004.
(4) See for example, William Robinson, “What to Expect from US “Democracy
Promotion” in Iraq”, March 30, 2004, available at
http://www.focusweb.org/peace/html/Article236.html
accessed September 2004.
(5) Eric Hobsbawm, “Spreading Democracy”, Foreign Policy, Sept/Oct 2004,
page 42
(6) Thomas Monnay, “Anti-Aristide Groups Split Threat to Future”,
Sun-Sentinel.com, February 14, 2004; Andrew Buncombe, “U.S. Revealed to be
Secretly Funding Opponents of Chavez”, The Independent, 13 March 13, 2004.
(7) Andrew Wells-Dang, “When Democracy Promotion Turns Partisan,” IRC Right
Web (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center), April 5, 2004.
(8) Upon asking Avelino Coelho, the head of the Timor Socialist Party, if
his party received assistance from IRI he responded “Who are they? We’ll
consider their support if they are offering.” Interview June 2004.
(9) It was Mahathir, in his last overseas trip as Malaysian Prime Minister,
who presciently warned the Timorese leadership against the bullying tactics
of the Australia Government over the dispute over oil revenues and
Washington’s control over their economic policy generally. To countervail
such moves, the Timorese Government has moved diplomatically closer to
Malaysia, China and Cuba.
(10) Another bitter irony is that the lack of staff, especially experienced
ones, makes it difficult for ministries to spend their money. Nine months
into the FY03/04 financial year the Ministry of Education had only been able
to spend 41% of its budget forcing most schools in the country to charge
their students fees to cover basic expenses, possibly violating Section 59
of the Constitution in the process.
(11) International Monetary Fund, Timor-Leste and Development Partners
Meeting: IMF Staff Statement, Asia and Pacific Department, Dili May 17-19,
2004 paragraph 3.
(12) International Monetary Fund, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste: 2004
Article IV Consultation, IMF Country Report No. 04/321 October 2004, page
17.
(13) Memorandum, Congressional Research Service, United States, March 27,
2002.
(14) International Monetary Fund, above n. 11, paragraph 15.
(15) UNCTAD, Least Developed Countries Report 2004: Linking International
Trade with Poverty Reduction, page 16-17.
(16) Government of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Private Sector
Investment Program, Draft, March 2004.
(17) Rubens Ricupero, The Least Developed Countries Report 2004 Overview by
the Secretary General of UNCTAD, 2004 page 7-8.
(18) Ricupero, above n.17.
(19) Assuming of course the Timorese can get the Australian Government to
return the many oil and natural gas fields in the Timor Sea they are
illegally claiming. As a result, “Timor-Leste loses $1 million a day due to
Australia’s unlawful exploitation in the disputed area,” commented Alkatiri.
According to Australian academic Tim Anderson, after balancing the aid and
oil revenues flows between the two countries, Australia is set to take ten
times the amount in oil that it has committed in aid to Timor because of a
“grossly unfair oil deal”. See, Tim Anderson, “Aid Trade and Oil:
Australia’s Second Betrayal of East Timor”, Journal of Australian Political
Economy, No. 52, December 2003.
(20) John G. Taylor, East Timor: The Price of Freedom, Zed Books, 2nd
Edition, 1999, page 74.
(21) See Near Neighbours – Good Neighbours: An Inquiry into Australia’s
Relationship with Indonesia, Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs
Defence and Trade, May 2004, paragraph 3.2.
(22) Tracie Webber, “Vandegrift Concludes Diplomatic visit to Dili”, USS
Vandegrift Public Affairs available at
www.news.navy.mil/local/c7f accessed
August 2004.
(23) “No one’s being punished for East Timor killings”, Australian Financial
Review, 6th November, 2004.
(24) Jonathan Steele, “East Timor is independent, as long as it does as it’s
told”, The Guardian, May 24th, 2002.
(25) Anett Keller, “US-East Timor agreement on ICC Article 98 detrimental to
the protection of human rights”, Indonesien-Information, No. 3/2002
available at
http://home.snafu.de/watchin/USET_ICC.htm
accessed 19th September, 2004.
(26) United States-Timor-Leste Agreement on Article 98 available at
www.etan.org/et2002c/september/01-07/02us-et.htm
accessed 20th September 2004
(27) “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he
caused.” from Graham Greene, The Quiet American, Penguin Books, 1973
edition.
Last night on a report by Indoensia's TV outlet Metro Media, Alfredo Reinado was interviewed and specifically asked where he had obtained the "weapons" and grenade launcher he possessed. His reply was that he had obtained them from Indonesia.
The implications are extremely serious. This is arms trafficking and now has implications for the Timor-Leste state, the Indonesian state, Australia due to its defence forces' presence and the United Nations.
There has been a suspicion for some time that arms smuggling has been occuring as early as in April and the involvement of those persons who were prominent por-integrationists or late comers to the independence cause. Of all the one who has direct links to Reinado is Rui Lopes, a Kopassus member during Indoensian rule and who has close links and regularly visits Atambua and Kupang. When he does he satys at the home of Joao Tavares, militia leader and por-integrationist.
The involvement of others will shortly come to light.
This is a serious development for the state of Timor-Leste and all the countries and UN involved in providing security to Timor-Leste and its people. This has moved beyond a criminal issue. It is now a defence issue. The nation's borders have been breached, and its sovereignty challenged in the most blatant and dangerous manner. These are not defence weapons. These are offence weapons. Unlike the weapons which were taken with him and his band, these weapons were imported with malice aforethought. The intend is to arm himself with superior weapons to the conventional weapons which Reinado knows the PNTL and F-FDTL are restricted to. It is also a menacing act by him towards the UN and other international forces in Timor-Leste. A wayu of saying, "You come after me and you will suffer casualties".
The question remains how and why it is that he can act so flagarantly and with such confidence. Once again it must be because he has powerfull friends who are guiding him and inciting him.
Atul Khare is a person who by culture and nature is sensitive to the needs of the host cunry. But most of all those who knew and worked with him know he respects the sovereignty of the host nation.
Unlike their successor Hasegawa, he and his boss Mr Sharma were aware that there was a duly elected government and parliament whom they had to respect and cooperate with.
Sharma and Khare stood up to the international community such as Australia and the US embassy when it came to the establsihment of the special police unit, which became a wedge they used to split the PNTL and F-FDTL.
Khare, was disliked by the ambassadors from Australia at the time, Paul Foley and US Rees, for this independence. Thank God both are gone and a real friend of the people of Timor-Leste has returned. Welcome Atul Khare.
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