Bob Burton, Canberra – As protests mount in East Timor, the Australian government is under increasing pressure to agree to a maritime boundary halfway between the two countries rather than a border that would deprive the world's newest nation of billions of dollars in oil revenues.
Teams of Australian and East Timorese negotiators are meeting in the East Timorese capital Dili, from Apr. 19 to 22, in an attempt to agree on a timetable for the negotiations over the sea boundary.
Last week, approximately 1,800 people protested outside the Australian Embassy in Dili over Australia's stand on the boundary issue. Further protests are planned this week.
Catholic Commission for Justice Development and Peace Executive Officer, Marc Purcell, believes that Australia is attempting to take advantage of its poor neighbor.
"Australia is being greedy. It is a grab. The Australian government can pretend 'we are negotiating in good faith' but the longer it drags on the more revenue Australia will get because of the current boundaries inherited from Indonesia," he said.
East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri said: "Sometimes, even between friends, between good friends, we have a lot of differences, and when there is a lot of money involved it is much easier to have differences between friends."
"Suddenly, I realize that when billions of dollars are involved, they became really bad partners," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
In early March, the Australian government rushed legislation through parliament to ratify an agreement with East Timor over the proposed Greater Sunrise oil and gas project. The legislation, named the Greater Sunrise Unitization Agreement Implementation Bill 2004, divides the potential proceeds between the two countries although their sea boundary has yet to be finalized.
The agreement, signed by both countries in March 2003, divides the revenues with 82 percent of the projected 7 billion US dollars for the Australian government. Only 18 percent goes to East Timor, even though the area is far closer to its shores than to Australia's.
The project developers are a consortium of companies including Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Shell and Osaka Gas.
At the time, East Timor signed the agreement in order ensure gain immediate access to revenues from the existing but far smaller Bayu Undan field, covered under the separate Timor Sea Treaty.
Subsequently, Alkatiri has warned that East Timor's parliament would withhold ratification of the Greater Sunrise agreement if Australia does not commit itself to a speedy resolution of the maritime boundary.
Australian Greens Sen. Bob Brown has flown to Dili to meet government officials and non-government organizations to back their calls for a fair maritime boundary. "The agreement robs the poorest country in South-east Asia to line the pockets of the government and the oil corporations of the richest country in the region, Australia," Brown said.
The current budget for East Timor is 79 million US dollars, mostly from aid. The new government also faces massive challenges, since more than half of East Timor's 800,000 people live on less that 340 dollars a year.
Mortality rates for children remain a high, and the literacy rate stands at some 60 percent.
At a press conference Monday, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer dismissed the East Timorese government complaints as no more than a negotiating tactic. "They see it as a useful way of strengthening their negotiating hand by accusing us of being bullying and aggressive," he said.
"Just listening to me now and I'm absolutely calm and reasonable and just hear what they have to say and we'll participate in the negotiating process as best we know how as well. We have our own way of negotiating, which mainly isn't public. Theirs is more public, they like to negotiate publicly. We're private people, us Australians," he said.
Australia has long had its eyes on the oil deposits between the two countries.
In August 1975, three months prior to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the Australian ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, had sent a cable to Canberra urging compliance with Indonesia's plans to annex East Timor.
"It would seem to me that this Department of Minerals and Energy might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal; or independent Portuguese Timor," he had written. "I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about."
After the invasion, Australia became the only nation to recognize Indonesia's annexation of East Timor and turned a blind eye to the slaughter of up to 200,000 people by the Indonesian military.
While East Timor's government is working to rebuild the shattered country, frustration with the Australian government – which claims it only has sufficient resources to discuss the boundary issues every six months – is growing.
Earlier this week, Alkatiri suggested that if lack of funding was preventing Australia from promptly resolving the boundary issue, then East Timor would pay Australia's costs out of future oil revenues.
Purcell argues that the Australian government position should back a swift and fair resolution of the boundary to help the new country wean itself off aid funding.
"If a line were drawn halfway in the sea between the two countries, two-thirds of these riches would lie closer to East Timor and, according to the International Law of the Sea, be rightfully theirs," he said.