Australian Parliamentarians have been told that Indonesia's troubled province of Papua is the most likely future cause of problems between Jakarta and Canberra. A group of experts has also told the MPs and Senators that the hardline tactics of the Indonesian military have made it impossible for Papuan moderates to cooperate with Indonesia.

Presenter/Interviewer: Graeme Dobell

Speakers: Professor Jamie Mackie and other experts from Australian National University, including Drs Chris Manning, Harold Crouch, Robert Cribb and Professor Andrew MacIntyre

Dobell: Australia's Indonesia-watchers say a dangerous polarisation seems inevitable in Papua. The hopeful period of dialogue started by president Abdurachman Wahid in 2000 when Irian Jaya was renamed Papua is long past. Indonesia has backed away from the special autonomy law enacted two years ago but never put into force. Doctor Chris Manning.

Manning: It's very clear now, I think that the Indonesian government is basically going to leave Papua as sort of a disturbance or a boil that they will not touch unless disturbances occur and then there will be heavy crackdowns, human rights abuse. There have been a number of decisions very recently, the most important one is to break Papua into three different provinces, it was taken whithout any consultation whatsoever with the Papuan council which Indonesian government was meant to have set up and hasn't formally constituted in a legal sense. The Governor was not consulted the parliament were not consulted, it's an example of the way in which Jakarta is now treating Papua that basically it's on the periphery.

Dobell: Doctor Harold Crouch says the Indonesian military bears much of the responsibility for the history of unrest in Papua.

Crouch: The standard operating procedures seem to be just go into a villiage beat up people burn their houses and all of that sort of thing. You might have read in the newspaper about several Kopassus people who where actually put on trial for murdering Theys Eluay who was the leader of the peaceful movement for independence in Papua. And when they were sentenced to over three years, or four years or something, the chief of staff of the army said "But they were heroes, they were performing duties for the nation," and that sort of thing. So I think as long as you have got the top army leader or the chief of staff for the army not the whole armed forces, the chief of staff of the army believing it's the duty of soldiers to murder peaceful people who are working for independence, then I can't see how we could justify having a close military relationship with Indonesia.

Dobell: Doctor Chris Manning says policy towards Papua is likely to become erratic particularly because of the cycle of military crackdowns.

Manning: My personal view is that Australia should be very clear and very strong on human rights abuse in Papua, while at the same time reaffirming Indonesia's ... the right for Papua to remain as, under current circumstances as part of Indonesia. I think those two issues shoud be clearly distinguished and we should monitor those issues, we should protest loudly where human rights abuses occur, we should be well-informed about them but at the same time recognising that it is an Indonesian issue for the current circumstances. And I think that will go on for about five years. I don't think we're anywhere close to a Timor situation and in five years may be it's going to begin to develop in that direction.

Dobell: The Canberra academics judge that Indonesia is most unlikely to concede Papua a right of secession as it did in East Timor in 1999 or even offer the levels of autonomy discussed with Aceh. The reluctance stems from both mineral riches in Papua and from Indonesian national pride. Doctor Robert Cribb says Jakarta will see international pressure over Papua as part of a plot to break up the country.

Cribb: Very many Indonesians are afraid that Indonesia will unravel easily in the way that Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union unravelled and they believe that if that happens it will be a result of outside intervention, malicious outside intervention which wants to break up Indonesian unity in order to be able to exploit Indonesia's natural resources. It's a widespread and rather deeply-felt fear across Indonesia. I think it's quite unlikely to happen now, if there was a moment when it might have happened, it was in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Suharto and there's was a lot of talk about that in Indonesians circles at the time but that kind of breakup needs a sharp shock in order to happen. The much more likely scenario in Indonesia is for Papua and perhaps Aceh to emerge as they have already emerged as special cases in the way that East Timor was a special case. But however much Papua is portrayed as a special case, it will be seen by very many Indonesians as a step, another step or first step in a concerted international campaign to break Indonesia up.

Dobell: For Australian policy-makers Papua is a lose-lose proposition according to Professor Andrew Maclntyre

MacLntyre : It really isn't a good option here. The cards are all in Indonesia's hands and they're probably going to be misplayed, they're probably going to be misplayed. This is going to take a decade or two to play out. There is not really a policy option for us here. The only slender hope is that with consolidation of democracy over a period of a decade or two in Indonesia, that that might change the way some of these dynamics play out inside Indonesia. But there's not much that Australia can do and whatever we do it's not going to yield fruit for us.

Dobell: And Professor Jamie Mackie says Australia must continue as it does now to pledge its support for Indonesia's territorial integrity but after East Timor he says Indonesian policy-makers will always suspect Australia's intentions.

Mackie: If we were ever to say anything but yes we support the maintenance of a unified Indonesia, if we were to say anything but that, we'd arouse a hornet's nest in that country. So you've got to keep saying that up till the day when the secession if it ever is a secession actually happens, ever though you may know it's going to happen, as we suspected over Timor. So any government in Australia is going to be caught between the pressure to do something, to say something to show their hand in some way, and yet the conventions of international diplomacy are that you've got to stand by national sovereignty.