Subject: Independent: No Takers For E.Timor Policing
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Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 07:17:50 EDT
From: Joyo@aol.comThe Independent [London] Thursday, September 2, 1999
EAST TIMOR CRISIS: NO TAKERS FOR POLICING MISSION
YESTERDAY'S VIOLENCE in East Timor, literally on the doorstep of the United Nations
mission, opens a diplomatic can of worms that the international community has been
desperate to keep closed.
The growing pressure to dispatch some kind of armed peace-keeping force to the
territory raises anxious questions. Who will provide such a force? What will its mandate
be? And how will it be reconciled with the complex politics of East Asia?
With Nato countries already heavily committed in Kosovo, there will be great reluctance
to commit more troops in a place so geographically and emotionally distant from European
and American voters.
Since the handover of Hong Kong, the United States is the only Western power with any
significant military presence in Asia and it is preoccupied with tension over Taiwan and
North Korea.
The obvious candidate is Australia, the closest developed country to East Timor and
Indonesia, and the one with the most to lose from any deterioration in the security
situation there. Since June the First Brigade, the vanguard of Australia's rapid-reaction
force, has been carrying out manoeuvres near Darwin, the country's northernmost city.
The Australian government has denied that the exercises have anything to do with the
situation in East Timor, but the presence of such a force strongly suggests that
preparations for the evacuation of Australian and other foreign nationals are well in
hand.
Earlier this month Canberra was embarrassed by a report in an Australian newspaper that
the government had made plans for a joint operation with the US to send 15,000 troops to
East Timor in the event of uncontrolled violence there. Governments in Canberra have
traditionally been wary of doing anything to offend the government of Indonesia, their
huge, over- populated and unstable northern neighbour.
After Indonesia annexed East Timor in 1976, only Australia recognised it.
Yesterday's suggestion by Don McKinnon, New Zealand's Foreign Minister, that non-UN
peace-keepers might have to be sent was quickly quashed by the Australian Foreign
Ministry.
But the UN's record on East Timor is also poor. Until the fall last year of the
Indonesian president, Suharto, the Security Council avoided the subject rather than
embarrass its stalwart anti-Communist friend.
The UN-brokered deal which allowed Monday's referendum on independence clearly states
that only the Indonesian police have any power to enforce security in East Timor.
The terms of deployment would probably take weeks of negotiation and might be vetoed in
the Security Council by China, which has its own reasons for opposing foreign interference
in internal affairs, especially on humanitarian grounds.
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