12 - The East Timor Commitment and Its Consequences

Summary

Before the events of the later 1990s, if there was one issue in Australia’s external relations on which there existed unalloyed bipartisan agreement it was East Timor. Governments of both persuasions had regarded the question of positive relations with Indonesia to be of far greater moment than the right to self-determination of the East Timorese, irrespective of the extent to which their Indonesian governors observed or denied their human rights. A Coalition government initiated the negotiation of the Timor Gap Zone of Co-operation Treaty, and a Labor government signed and ratified it. Though some thirty-two states indicated in one way or another that they accepted Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, only the positive affirmation of that sovereignty by Australia in that treaty resulted in litigation before the International Court of Justice. Prime Minister Paul Keating had expressed the sentiment that there was no country more important than Indonesia to Australia, and later Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had repeated it. But by 2000, this constant in Australia’s regional posture had changed completely.