Hamish McDonald – As Megawati Sukarnoputri edges closer to assuming the Indonesian presidency, she has given some signs of a more conciliatory approach to Australia and breakaway East Timor than indicated so far by her huffy nationalist stance in public.
In recent private meetings with Australian officials and Indonesia specialists, she has agreed that relations with Canberra need to be put back to a more cordial basis after the strains of the 1999 East Timor crisis.
She has told visitors she thought the relationship important to both countries, and even if government-level relations were "troubled", the network of contacts, such as between business and in academia, remained strong. As neighbours, both sides needed to work on improving relations.
However, according to some of those meeting her, Megawati still shares the feeling of many in the Jakarta political elite that Australia's "overbearing" attitude during the military intervention was offensive to Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the Vice-President has also sent assurances to East Timor's leaders that she acknowledges and respects the emerging nation's independence, the resistance spokesman Jose Ramos-Horta said yesterday.
He said Megawati had given the assurances through a number of intermediaries, including the former Australian ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who frequently visits Indonesia as head of the private-sector AustralAsia Institute.
Independence leaders, including Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmao, have so far failed in attempts to meet Megawati on visits to Indonesia – in contrast to Abdurrahman Wahid, who has met the Timorese several times and visited Dili in February last year to apologise for past violations.
But Megawati has now sent signals that they will be received, according to Ramos-Horta, who gave a public lecture last night at the University of NSW on his country's place in the region.
"We hope therefore that Vice-President Megawati, if and when she takes power in Indonesia, will pursue the same policies as Abdurrahman Wahid and seek to normalise relations with East Timor," he said.
"However, if things do not go the way they should, I would say that it would be Indonesia that would be affected," he warned, citing the country's internal conflicts, economic problems and difficult relations with international lenders and the United States Congress.
The problem, he said, was that in public Megawati had shown no "sympathy or warmth" towards East Timor, and had not distanced herself from hardline military elements or pro-Jakarta Timorese militia figures such as Eurico Guterres. "However, once she assumes office she will probably feel heavier pressure from the international community," he said.
Megawati is understood to have agreed with recent Australian visitors that continuing instability on East Timor's border would not be in Indonesia's interests and would maintain tensions between Australia and Indonesia.
She told one group that Australia and Indonesia should work together, and that the position of East Timorese in camps in West Timor should be resolved. Help should be given to those who wanted to return, and the others should be dispersed to other parts of Indonesia.
But Megawati will be tested on two concerns stressed yesterday by Ramos-Horta: continuing support for anti-independence militias by the Indonesian military, and lack of progress by Indonesian authorities in prosecuting army officers responsible for the 1999 militia violence. "I certainly have lost all faith and confidence in the Indonesian legal system," he said, citing the light sentences given to militia members found guilty of the mob killing of three United Nations workers in West Timor last year. "The international community, the UN Security Council must consider the only option available and that is a war crimes tribunal for East Timor."