Quentin Dempster: Returning now to our earlier story, the shootings this afternoon in an East Timor refugee camp, and the so-far fruitless search for 57 men who broke out of a Dili jail earlier this week. Well, Bob Lowry is a military and political consultant and has advised the East Timorese government on national security issues. I spoke to him earlier from our Canberra Studio.

Quentin Dempster: Bob Lowry, we've had the prison walkout, open calls to rebellion by rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, now there are reports of four people in a refugee camp being shot by the East Timor police. It looks like a country that is ungovernable, impossible to secure, does it not?

Bob Lowry, Former security advisor to East Timor: It might look like that superficially but these are all relatively minor incidents in themselves. And the main thing is that the government, or the temporary government under Jose Ramos Horta, and the UN police and the military act together to overcome these minor things so they don't have the potential to escalate into something more serious. But certainly there is the potential there unless it's handled effectively and quickly.

Quentin Dempster: You're confident that they can get the 57 escapees back in custody?

Bob Lowry: Well, not necessarily all of them but these sort of people are not going to want to live in the depths of the jungle for very long, so eventually they will find out where they are. I think the thing to bear in mind too at the moment is that we've had the meltdown of the East Timorese police force and the East Timorese military, and the UN has just announced a new mission for East Timor of 1,600 foreign police. But at the moment there are only about 400 of them on the ground, so they're spread pretty thinly. As a result of that, there is a little bit of a vacuum at the moment which they have to fill in the short term before the new mission actually builds up and has a greater capability to enforce the law in East Timor.

Quentin Dempster: So this build-up would still be months away?

Bob Lowry: Well, to reach 1,600 police officers they're probably a few months away, not too many hopefully. They should start adding to that force relatively quickly. I am not sure exactly what the timetable is but they've just put in a new commissioner of police about a week or so ago and he would obviously be pressing for the additional police assistance as quickly as possible. But it will take some time of course to prepare them. In the meantime, they have to use the resources they've got, backed up by the foreign military forces that are there, to maintain the situation in a relatively calm position.

Quentin Dempster: There's been a complete breach of command particularly at the jail, hasn't there?

Bob Lowry: Yes, that's an interesting case. I notice that the special representative of the Secretary-General of the UN, who is based in East Timor, actually visited it about two or three weeks ago and he commented at the time that the basic needs of the prisoners were being met but they needed to improve the facilities. But he didn't mention anything about a lack of security or a need to boost security, although he may have done that separately.

Quentin Dempster: Should international forces have been there securing the jail, as PM Ramos Horta has suggested?

Bob Lowry: We don't know what arrangements had been made between the government and the forces and the police to do that. In the first instance, it should have been the responsibility of the prison guards. If they were not capable of fulfilling their obligations, they should have been reinforced by police, and only then should you look to the military forces. But all of this depends, of course, on what specific arrangements had been made in East Timor between the various parties involved and that we don't know at the moment.

Quentin Dempster: Alexander Downer is going to East Timor on Sunday. What can he practically do?

Bob Lowry: He can just make sure that the various elements of the Australian contribution at least are sufficiently well equipped to do the job they've got. Although there's been an announcement of a withdrawal, or with thinning out of the forces there, that obviously won't occur before the new UN police mission is built up and until the situation comes back under control and there's some understanding of what the escape of the 54 actually means. Of course, we've got to remember that those 57 or so people who escaped are not necessarily all going to join a specific team for a specific purpose. Many of them will want to go their own way and do their own thing, so we're still yet to see what the purpose of their escape is and whether it will cause any real ructions.

Quentin Dempster: What's your view of the likely long-term outcome? Can East Timor survive as an independent nation and overcome these seemingly intractable internal security difficulties?

Bob Lowry: Yes, there's no doubt about that. It will take a little bit of time to get people back into their houses and to get these institutions like the military and the police reformed and working effectively, the justice sector up and going and get through the elections next year. And, of course, in the whole process of that there will be a lot of politics and there will be a lot of effervescence but there's no doubt that in the longer term they can create a reasonably effective democracy, but a lot of changes are going to have to occur.

Quentin Dempster: You're an expert on Australia's relations with Indonesia. How are the Indonesians likely to be viewing and interpreting these events in East Timor?

Bob Lowry: I don't think they'll be too concerned about these particular events because in themselves they're fairly minor. As long as people act with a little bit of purpose they can be overcome reasonably quickly. I don't think there's any chance of a widespread insurgency occurring on a significant level. There will be gang violence, as we've seen in Dili in recent times, there will be undisciplined actions because of the weapons that are out there in the community and the various political tensions that exist and will continue to exist in East Timor, but those are the sorts of things that are were there before this particular incident and they will continue for some time to come. But getting the Parliament up, getting the institutions of the justice sector working, getting through the elections next year, also the government has pumped another $200 million-odd into the next year's budget to try and get some people back into the work force, all of these things will help to quieten it down a little bit. Nevertheless, it is one of the poorest countries in the world and certainly the poorest in south-east Asia, and it will take a long time before you actually establish a really viable and robust democracy.

Quentin Dempster: Bob Lowry, thanks very much for talking to Lateline.

Bob Lowry: My pleasure.