Kalinga Seneviratne – Australia has taken the high moral ground in organising the rescue of the East Timorese people, perhaps 25 years too late.

While the Western media, and some of the Asian media as well, have hailed Australia's leadership role in organising the peacekeeping force for East Timor in such a short time, they have conveniently ignored some pertinent questions.

Why has Australia moved in such haste to organise an "invading" (in Indonesian eyes) force into East Timor at this stage, when for the last quarter of a century it has been the strongest supporter of the Suharto regime's annexation of the former Portuguese colony?

In answer to this question, it will be interesting to note that the untapped deep sea-bed oil wealth on the Timor Gap, which will come under the territorial integrity of an independent East Timor, would have played a big role in Canberra's decision to mount a rescue act.

On December 11, 1989, on board a Royal Australian Air Force VIP 707 plane flying over the Timor Sea at an altitude of 10,000 metres, the Timor Gap Treaty (TGT) was signed by the foreign ministers of Australia and Indonesia. Under the treaty, the two countries are to jointly explore for oil and mineral resources in the Timor Gap sea-bed and share any revenue from it equally.

When Portugal, as the UN-recognised colonial administrator of East Timor, challenged it in the World Court (ICJ) in the Hague, Australia defended the action. Portugal argued that the TGT was illegal because the UN has never recognised Indonesia's annexation of East Timor.

In June 1995, the ICJ ruled that it could not make a decision on the legality of Indonesia's annexation of East Timor, because Indonesia does not recognise the authority of the ICJ.

Following the ICJ verdict, Australia claimed victory over Portugal and then Foreign Minister Gareth Evans stated publicly that Australia will have access to Timor Sea oil, without bother from Portugal.

As recently as April this year, Mr Evans, in a submission to a Senate Foreign Affairs committee inquiry into East Timor, argued that the TGT was not a blow to the interests and aspirations of the East Timorese for independence. He also reiterated that the TGT did not attract criticism from the international community. "There were no General Assembly or Security Council Resolutions calling on Australia not to ratify the treaty, or indeed even criticising the treaty," he pointed out.

According to figures presented to the Senate hearing, revenue from the TGT is currently US$5 million a year and is not expected to exceed US$100 million. But, industry sources seem to think otherwise.

Australia's giant multinational oil and mining company, BHP, is a major stake holder in the Timor Gap oil exploration.

BHP, along with US-based Phillips Petroleum Company are developing a natural gas field off the East Timor coast. The northern Australian port city of Darwin will become the processing centre for this gas exploration.

In August last year, with the possibility of independence for East Timor in the offing, BHP's Jakarta representative, Mr Peter Cockroft, made a secret visit to the notorious Cipinang Prison for an hour-long meeting with the jailed resistance leader, Mr Xanana Gusmao. He is believed to have been assured by Mr Gusmao that BHP's petroleum assets off the East Timor coast would be safe under a post-independence government. The East Timorese resistance movement has never accepted the legality of the TGT.

The Indonesian government threatened to expel Mr Cockroft when it found out about the meeting. At the annual general meeting of BHP shareholders a month later, Mr Jerry Ellis, the CEO of BHP, said confidently that there will be no threat to BHP's oil interests in the Timor Gap under an independent East Timor.

Having a stake in the Timor Gap oil resources will be crucial for the Australian economy in years to come, as its off-shore oil fields in the Bass Straits near Tasmania are due to dry up in a few years time.

Without doubt, economic factors have motivated Australia's foreign policy towards Indonesia and the East Timor issue in recent years.

It's not only the signing of TGT, Australia also developed close military and economic cooperation with the Suharto regime to fight off attempts by Malaysia's Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to keep Australia out of East Asian affairs.

Australia saw President Suharto as a close ally in its efforts to lock into the fast growing markets north of the continent. Thus, successive Australian governments in the 1980s and the 1990s gave priority to developing close economic, political and military links with the Suharto regime.

In November 1994, close on the heels of the "Dili massacre" where the Indonesian army killed unarmed demonstrators, a conference on Indonesia in Canberra was told by then Foreign Minister Evans, that human rights issues should not be allowed to dominate Australia's relationship with Indonesia.

"It is clear that in the economic sphere, we already have a substantial foundation on which to build still further. Our commercial linkages are growing rapidly – two-way trade grew to A$3 billion last year, almost treble that of five years ago," Mr Evans said.

In December 1995, Australia signed a defence pact with Indonesia, which angered human rights activists at home, because the government kept the public and parliament in the dark about the negotiations for the landmark defence pact.

The pact was the first defence accord signed by Indonesia, which committed both countries to consulting each other – if either or both of them is threatened; to consider joint responses; as well as promote security cooperation in the region.

Ironically, this month, as Australia prepared to send peacekeepers to East Timor, Indonesia revoked the pact in the face of anti-Australian nationalistic uproar in the country.

In recent years, Australia has also refused to grant political asylum to East Timorese refugees, so as not to upset the Indonesian government.

In May 1995, on the eve of the then Indonesian Research and Technology Minister B.J. Habibie's visit to Australia to sign a technological cooperation agreement, 18 East Timorese boat people arrived on the shores of Darwin. They were the first to arrive by boat since the 1975 invasion.

While Dr Habibie signed agreements for cooperation in developing high-tech industries from aerospace, radar and solar engineering to construction, cars and coastal management, the Australian government did not know whether to declare the boat people Indonesians, East Timorese or Portuguese.

In a mockery of international diplomacy, four months later, the Australian government advised the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) that the boat people should be handed over to Portugal because it still claimed sovereignty over East Timor.

It was only a few months earlier that Canberra was celebrating a victory over Lisbon at the World Court, after arguing that Indonesia is the legal ruler of East Timor. This has been, of course, Australia's official position since 1975.

When this decision was also supposed to apply to 1,300 other East Timorese "tourists" who were awaiting a decision from the RRT after applying for political asylum, Australia's Catholic church threatened to break the law by harbouring them in its church premises, in a bid to block deportation.

The East Timorese, who have arrived on tourist visas and applied for political asylum, have fought legal battles in Australia for years, in an attempt to get refugee status. A network of East Timorese exiles, churches and human rights activists across the continent have supported their cases and a few have been successful.

In spite of the government's support for the Suharto regime's stand on East Timor, Australia has been a sanctuary for many East Timorese independence activists since 1975. The East Timorese resistance leader and Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta has been living in Australia for the most part of the last 20 years. Mr Ramos-Horta, however, is also a strong critic of Australia's policy towards Indonesia during the Suharto era. Immediately after the Indonesian president's resignation last year, he chided Australia for putting military links ahead of support for democracy and human rights in Indonesia.

"Australia's record has been one of playing golf with Suharto, with Habibie, with the military, providing military training to Indonesians in this country, joint military exercises, signing a joint security treaty between the democratic country Australia and a dictatorship." he told an Amnesty International gathering in Sydney. "It's an extraordinary display of hypocrisy," Mr Ramos-Horta pointed out.

Hypocrisy or not, if Australia's peacekeeping operations are successful, an independent East Timorese government, in which Mr Ramos-Horta is expected to play a leading role, will have a lot of hard bargaining to do with Australia.

Australia is believed not to be too happy with the drawing up of the maritime boundaries under TGT. A year after the Treaty was signed, Mr Evans was reported to have told a TGT Forum in Darwin that "subject to the Treaty, Australia continues to claim sovereign rights over the seabed resources of the entire Treaty area".

A small, vulnerable East Timor beholden to Australia for rescuing it, may find it extremely difficult to resist pressure from Australia for extracting a new Treaty which would be more favourable to Australian economic interests in the region.

In this context, the investments Canberra has put into peacekeeping operations may well turn out to be a small price to pay. Only time will tell.

[The writer was the Australian and South Pacific correspondent for Inter Press Service news agency from 1991 to 1997. He contributed this article to The Straits Times.]