From the World Socialist Website...

By Peter Symonds 20 June 2006

Having established an army of occupation in East Timor, the
Australian government is engaged in ongoing political warfare
on several fronts to ensure its predominance over the half-island.
In the United Nations, Australian diplomats are pressing to ensure
that Canberra retains control over any new UN mission. As part
of this offensive, the Australian media is conducting an unrelenting
campaign against Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, who is regarded
as too close to rival Portugal and thus an obstacle to Australian
interests.

Murdoch’s Australian has again outlined the agenda
most openly. In a comment on Saturday, foreign affairs editor
Greg Sheridan argued that while other countries needed to contribute
to the reestablishment of a police force in East Timor, Canberra
had to retain overall control. “The UN Security Council is
considering East Timor and its future policing requirements right
now. It is a vital task for Australian diplomacy to get the form
of this right,” he stated.

Sheridan declared it was vital that “Australia do the
job alone” in police training. “The UN in Timor has
been a route to confusion and dysfunction. In particular it has
been a route to Portuguese influence, a baneful business indeed.”
Early this month, Sheridan branded Portugal as “Australia’s
diplomatic enemy in East Timor” and identified Alkatiri as
“the key to their influence”.

While the Howard government cannot afford to be so open, with
the backing of Washington, it is involved in a diplomatic offensive
to guarantee that Australia leads any UN operations in East Timor.
The push is particularly cynical as the US and Australia have
consistently opposed calls by the UN, East Timor and Portugal
for an extended UN presence in the country. As recently as early
May, Canberra and Washington vigorously opposed any extension
of the UN mission.

Differences surfaced openly in the UN Security Council last
week when Australian ambassador Robert Hill opposed a proposal
by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a formal peace-keeping
operation to take over from the present Australian-led military
force. The Howard government’s plan, modelled on the Australian-led
occupation of the Solomon Islands, is to retain exclusive military
control, while at the same time presiding over a multi-national
police force and installing Australian officials in key administrative
posts. Hill argued for a foreigner to be put in charge of the
East Timorese police force, privately suggesting former Australian
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Palmer for the post.

Portugal and Malaysia, both of which have police contingents
in East Timor, backed Annan’s call for the UN to take full
control of the military and police presence. Portugal’s ambassador
Joao Salgueiro told the Security Council: “Timor-Leste is
a child of the United Nations. So it needs the universality and
impartiality of the United Nations, which must once again take
a leading role.”

A meeting of foreign ministers from the Community of Portuguese-Speaking
Countries on Sunday decided to send a mission to East Timor to
assess the situation. Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas
declared: “East Timor is not a failed state. We have to defend
the necessity of sending a United Nations force in which all member
nations participate actively.” Last week the European Commission,
which has backed Portugal’s ambitions in East Timor, signed
an agreement with the Alkatiri government to provide 18 million
euros in aid with a focus on “institutional capacity building,”
as well as poverty alleviation.

Yesterday US ambassador John Bolton stepped into the diplomatic
arena to back Canberra’s bid for control. Opposing “a
UN presence forever” in East Timor, he argued it was necessary
“to support the Australians and New Zealanders who are there”.
Of course, if the Solomon Island intervention is any guide, the
Howard government intends to stay in East Timor not just for months,
but years.

This diplomatic arm-wrestling reflects sharpening inter-imperialist
antagonisms, not just over East Timor, but internationally. At
stake is control over significant oil and gas reserves in the
Timor Sea as well as East Timor’s strategic position in South
East Asia, astride key naval routes. The Howard government exploited
factional conflict in the East Timor’s government and security
forces to begin dispatching 1,300 Australian troops to the island
on May 24. The last concern of any of the competing powers is
the plight of the poverty-stricken East Timorese, many of whom
have fled to refugee camps.

Campaign against Alkatiri

The divisions in the UN are paralleled in the factional struggle
in East Timor itself, where Australian allies—President Xanana
Gusmao and Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta—are engaged
in a barely veiled campaign to oust Alkatiri. Under the country’s
constitution, the president does not have the power to sack the
prime minister without a vote of no confidence in parliament,
where Alkatiri’s Fretilin party has the overwhelming majority.
As a result, the Australian media has been seeking to dredge up
the basis for criminal charges against Alkatiri, which would force
him to step aside.

The latest shot in the campaign was fired last night on the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners”
program. In a shameless piece of propaganda, ABC reporter Liz
Jackson sought to demonstrate that Alkatiri, in league with former
interior minister Rogerio Lobato, had supplied weapons to former
Fretilin fighters to form a hit squad against his political opponents.
Openly contemptuous of Alkatiri and his denial of any wrongdoing,
Jackson presented, unchallenged, a patchwork of comments and documents,
all fed to her by the prime minister’s political enemies
and torn out of context.

It should be recalled that the alleged misdeeds took place
amid incipient factional fighting, in which 600 rebel soldiers,
joined by sections of the police force, were threatening to wage
civil war if Alkatiri did not immediately step down. Even if completely
true, all the “evidence” demonstrates is that Alkatiri
and Lobato, like the rebels, were arming their supporters. The
ABC program’s partisan approach verged on the farcical as
Jackson pressed Alkatiri on the illegality on “arming civilians,”
while ignoring the fact that those she painted as “the heroes
of the anti-Alkatiri struggle” were, in strict legal terms,
guilty of mutiny and treason.

In its efforts to present Horta as the popular prime minister
in waiting, “Four Corners” perhaps revealed more than
was intended. Horta has tried to present himself as above political
infighting—the man to bring all the factions together. But
the ABC’s coverage of his meeting with rebel leaders in Gleno,
immediately prior to an opposition rally in Dili on June 6, showed
Horta openly factionalising with anti-Alkatiri forces. Asked about
this activity, Horta declared unabashed: “Everywhere I have
been to—Baucau and everywhere—and I have had tremendous
sympathy, support, warmth from the people by the thousands, by
the hundreds. And I feel overwhelmed, maybe because they are desperately
looking for leadership, looking for people they can trust.”

Neither Horta nor his Australian backers want to test this
“tremendous support” at elections due next year. “The
problem is, obviously, can the country afford the next six months,
the next nine months of this continued pressure on the prime minister
to resign?” Horta asked. “Can we afford this increasing
loss of credibility of the government and the poor image of the
country? Or should the prime minister say, ‘Well, I step
aside in the interests of my own party. It seems that I am a liability
to my own party, if not the country’.” The threat of
criminal charges is obviously designed to compel Alkatiri to make
that decision.

According to the Melbourne-based Age newspaper on Monday,
President Gusmao is considering using his constitutional powers
to launch a judicial inquiry into the allegations unearthed by
the ABC and other Australian media. Horta was considering a visit
to the alleged leader of the Fretilin hit squad, Vincente “Railos”
do Concecao, to gather evidence and report back to Gusmao. “The
president is not indifferent, quite the contrary. He is attentive
to these allegations, and... he’s garnering whatever information
is available, and he will take action in due course if he has
to,” Horta explained.

These sordid political machinations highlight the absurdity
of the so-called independence proclaimed in 2002 as a step forward
for the East Timorese people. In the era of globalised production,
the tiny half island was never going to be independent of the
global and regional powers, or the institutions of international
finance capital such as the World Bank and IMF. Far from enjoying
peace and prosperity, East Timor has become another arena for
imperialist rivalries, in which each local clique seeks to secure
its political position by obtaining the backing of one or other
of the competing powers. Far from ending conflict in East Timor,
the Australian intervention is laying the basis for a future civil
war as Canberra seeks to install its own clients.

 See Also:
Australian government steps up campaign
to oust East Timor's prime minister Mari Alkatiri
[12 June 2006]
Australian foreign minister unveils plans
for the colonial occupation of East Timor
[7 June 2006]
Australia, Timor and oil: the record
[6 June 2006]
Oppose Australia's neo-colonial occupation
of East Timor
[1 June 2006]
Why Australia wants "regime
change" in East Timor
[30 May 2006]

Timor Sea Justice campaign website

http://www.timorseajustice.org/