Karen Polglaze, Canberra – A new book on Australia's foreign policy approach to East Timor from 1998 to 2000 is highly selective and partisan, opposition foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton said today.

The book, published today, is entitled East Timor in Transition 1998 to 2000: An Australian Policy Challenge. It was written by officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and launched today by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Mr Brereton said in a statement that the book was selective and showed Mr Downer's flawed diplomacy. "This publication was initiated at the suggestion of Foreign Minister Downer and has been produced by DFAT officers directly involved in the government's East Timor diplomacy," he said. "It cannot be regarded as objective or balanced. Taxpayer funds should not have been spent on this political exercise."

Mr Downer said the book was written because of the high public interest in East Timor and events before and after the August 1999 independence ballot.

"This is a unique undertaking," Mr Downer said at the launch. "But East Timor has been such a vast public interest issue in Australia and of such compelling national importance and for a long time, that I wanted to provide the Australian public with insights into the historical, political and diplomatic context in which events played out and to the greatest degree possible, access to the deliberations and the actions of their government."

The book draws on public and departmental sources to explain how Australian officials saw the events from the fall of former Indonesian president Suharto in May, 1998, until after the arrival of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

It covers controversial issues, such as when Australia knew about the connection between the Indonesian military and the militia groups they formed, funded and ran, and how much pressure it put on Indonesia to stop the violence that may have compromised the August 30 ballot.