Former Australian peacekeepers in East Timor accused the federal government of stealing from the fledgling nation today as talks resumed over the carve-up of gas and oil reserves in the Timor Sea, five years to the day since the first peacekeepers arrived.
On the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the Australian-led peacekeeping force (InterFET) in Dili, former peacekeepers called on the government to give East Timor a bigger share of the royalties.
"We went over there and did a really hard job and thought we were doing some good," former Army Major Chip Henriss-Anderssen told AAP. "But it turns out that the government wants the oil reserves. "We're a country that's developed and on our feet. Timor is a country that's really struggling – these people have nothing." East Timorese government officials arrived in Canberra today for three days of talks over the seabed boundary and division of the rich oil and gas reserves, estimated to be worth $US30 billion. All three major oil and gas fields – Sunrise, Bayu Undan and Laminaria – are closer to East Timor than they are to Australia.
Under an interim deal, East Timor will get 90 per cent of government revenue from the joint petroleum development area, including the Conoco Phillips operated Bayu Undan field and part of the Woodside Petroleum operated Sunrise project. But under a second deal, the international unitisation agreement, only 20 per cent of the Sunrise field lies in the joint zone, with the remaining 80 per cent given to Australia.
The boundary has been a sticking point between the two countries, with Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri accusing Australia of bullying his country, one of the world's poorest.
Former Australian Federal Police officer Wayne Sievers, part of the police mission to East Timor during the independence ballot in 1999, said the boundary dispute was nothing more than the theft of East Timor's oil. Mr Sievers said the East Timorese had voted for independence from Indonesia despite knowing it would lead to bloodshed.
"They were a people who had nothing – who earned less than a dollar a day – and I don't think the price of their liberation, given that they lost 15 per cent of their population during World War II to support us in the fight against Japanese fascism and militarism, should be the loss of their oil," Mr Sievers told a rally outside the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) building.
"They have nothing apart from the oil and that's the only thing that's going to rebuild their country back from the year zero visited upon them by the Indonesian forces."
Today's talks are the second round of negotiations, following on from similar talks in Dili last April. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer threatened to call off further talks in July after Opposition Leader Mark Latham said a Labor government would start the talks again from scratch.
But after talks in Canberra with his East Timorese counterpart Jose Ramos Horta last month, Mr Downer agreed to look for creative solutions to the problem and said he hoped a decision could be reached by Christmas.
The two delegations released a brief statement this afternoon describing today's initial discussions as good. "The delegations look forward to further productive discussions over the next few days," the statement said.