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Keating is Suharto accomplice: Horta

Source
Agence France Presse - October 6, 1999

Sydney – East Timorese resistance leader Jose Ramos Horta launched a bitter attack on former Australian prime minister Paul Keating on Tuesday, accusing him of betraying the people of East Timor.

His attack followed criticism by Keating of current Prime Minister John Howard, whom he blamed for creating the East Timorese disaster to gain domestic political advantage and votes.

Keating said Howard had pressed Indonesian President B.J. Habibie to allow East Timor's self-rule ballot and the result was 500,000 out of a population of 800,000 were missing with 60 percent of its buildings destroyed. "This is a complete disaster," Keating said.

But in a strong defence of Howard, Ramos Horta, joint winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as international spokesman for the East Timorese, said he found Keating's words "nauseating."

"He never said a word of criticism about the brutality during his time," Ramos Horta told ABC radio. "He has not said a word of condemnation of the killings in East Timor for the last few months.

"How dare he criticise the only prime minister in Australia in 23 years who has had the courage to respond to the appeals to the cries of the people of East Timor."

A succession of Australian prime ministers, including Keating, have been accused here and overseas of acquiescing in Indonesia's seizure of East Timor and turning a blind eye to the deaths of an estimated 200,000 East Timorese people since 1975. Ramos Horta said the people of East Timor would remember John Howard and his government as the only government that tried to help them.

"They will remember the likes of Paul Keating for year after year were an accomplice of the Suharto regime," he said. "For 23 years Australia betrayed the people of East Timor, 200,000 died because of Indonesian army's behaviour and the complicity of successive Australian governments.

"Long before Howard sent a letter to Habibie, there was pressure from the US Congress, from the European Union, from people through the region itself to change policy on East Timor."

Ramos Horta said there was a cosy relationship between Australia and Indonesia in which they had joint military exercises, and Australia had provided military and intelligence training as well as economic aid to the Suharto regime. But while claiming a special relationship with Indonesia, it was unable to persuade Jakarta to stop the killings.

He said one single life was too high a cost for independence, but it would not stop the people of East Timor fighting or dying for their freedom. "Should the people of East Timor not vote, renounce all their rights just because the Indonesians might kill them?.

"Maybe Paul Keating is a coward, maybe he prefers to surrender to dictators to tyrants, but not the people of East Timor. I lost three brothers, a sister in this war, I still do not know where one of my sisters is at the moment. Our house in Dili was ransacked as well.

"Maybe other families are like me, but we are still saying we are going to fight, we will fight for independence, for freedom for our country."

He asked if Australia wanted a relationship with Indonesia of servility, of subservience to the hardliners, to Kopassus and to Suharto. "Or do you want a relationship where Australia can be proud to say: 'We stand for human rights'."

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