Craig Skehan, Bandar Seri Begawan – Australian Prime Minister John Howard has used talks with Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid in a concerted bid to ease tensions over East Timor through active opposition to independence demands in West Papua.
Mr Howard's bid, which has been carefully coordinated with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, entails strong public statements reinforcing an alliance with Jakarta on the issue. After the East Timor violence, bloodshed in West Papua could quickly harden Australian public opinion, further complicating diplomatic relations with Jakarta.
In 1969, Indonesia hand picked 1025 West Papuans to vote in a ballot aimed at technically meeting a United Nations requirement for self-determination. Even the UN's own chief poll supervisor said there had been no popular vote.
At a media conference in Brunei this week, Mr Downer warned that West Papuan secession leading to fragmentation of Indonesia could result in a "bloodbath". And on Wednesday night, Mr Howard said that at a bilateral meeting with Mr Wahid, the Indonesian leader had personally thanked him for Australia's stand.
Mr Howard agreed to lobby for Indonesia to be allowed observer status of the South Pacific Forum. "He [President Wahid] saw that as the act of a country that took Indonesia's interests into account," Mr Howard said.
He was asked if his stand on West Papua could constitute a repeat of the way past Australian governments largely turned a blind eye to human rights violations in East Timor and ignored pleas for an act of self-determination.
The Prime Minister said that he didn't have time to repudiate some of the assertions on which the question was based. "But I don't believe that you can draw an automatic parallel if historical circumstances are different," Mr Howard said.
He said that this included the fact that while West Papua, like the rest of modern Indonesia, was part of the former colonial Dutch East Indies, East Timor was under Portuguese rule.
Australia's stance on the future of the 1.5 million people of West Papua appears to be at the centre of a peace offering to Indonesians still hurt by outside intervention in East Timor.