Don Greenlees, Jakarta – Seated in a conference room of the Sheraton Nusa Dua Hotel in Bali, an agitated Indonesian president B.J. Habibie thumped his fist on the table. "We will not have any foreign troops. You have got to understand that. I can't allow foreign troops into Indonesia," he said.
In front of him was John Howard, who had just repeated a request to allow foreign peacekeepers to go to East Timor, exasperating Habibie. The date was April 27, 1999. It was 10 days after pro-Indonesia militia had rampaged through Dili, killing independence supporters, and 20 days after they killed up to 60 people in a Catholic church.
Efforts to convince Habibie and other powers in Indonesia, especially the armed forces, of the need for peacekeepers failed and the East Timorese who voted for independence later paid the price.
The issue of whether the international community pressed Indonesia hard enough to allow foreign troops to protect the 1999 referendum in East Timor continues to vex the debate about the territory's passage to independence.
If Indonesia had been forced to accept foreign peacekeepers, the argument goes, then the destruction and violence that followed the vote in favour of independence could have been averted.
Various leaked Australian government assessments have reinforced the view that our politicians knew a lot more about linkages between the Indonesian army and the militia than they let on in public. But fears about jeopardising relations with Jakarta prompted them not to divulge the information or press too hard for foreign intervention.
These accusations have clearly wounded the Government, in particular those ministers with direct oversight of Australian policy. Faced with the possibility of a return to Opposition, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer sought to ensure his place in history by ordering his department to carry out the unusual exercise of preparing a book on the East Timor saga.
East Timor in Transition 1998-2000: An Australian Policy Challenge was launched in Canberra yesterday. In commissioning the book, Downer ensured the authors, officials in the department, had extensive access to relevant cables and other assessments.
The risk for a foreign minister in ordering such a book is that a positive account is treated as self-justification or a cover-up and a negative account makes him look bad or irritates foreign governments. Either way, he stands to lose. The essence of this book is its explanation of contentious aspects of Australia's role. Two stand out: lobbying for a peacekeeping force to go in before the referendum and the December 1998 letter from the Prime Minister to Habibie urging him to agree to self-determination, but only after an interregnum of some years.
On the first issue, the book makes a detailed case that Australia and other players, Portugal and the UN included, on numerous occasions pressed hard for peacekeepers but met stubborn resistance from Indonesia.
This claim is borne out by the record. The above-mentioned incident in Bali involving Howard and Habibie, although not described so colourfully in the book, is one case in point. Australia's ambassador in Jakarta, John McCarthy, had asked Habibie the same question as early as the previous December and been told bluntly: "I can't do that."
Explaining Habibie's reluctance, his foreign policy adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar says Habibie would have been "crucified" if he had agreed. "What he was doing was just making clear to Howard where he stood and the limits of where he could go," she says in an interview for a forthcoming book co-written by The Australian's Robert Garran and me.
Indonesia would almost certainly have cancelled the referendum rather than accede to pressure for foreign troops. And despite the high price paid, independence leaders have made it clear they would rather the flawed referendum they had than no referendum at all.
On the issue of the Howard letter, the Government's self-justification has led to a more selective review of history. The book asserts the Howard letter was aimed at breaking a logjam in negotiations between Indonesia and Portugal over an autonomy package. In fact, it did more than this. It inadvertently contributed to Habibie's reckless decision to have an immediate referendum without consulting key Indonesian or international parties.
But Portuguese, UN and Indonesian ministers and officials who participated in the so-called tripartite talks are unanimous there were good prospects of a deal on the content of the autonomy package when the Howard letter went to Habibie.
At best, this would have made the Howard letter premature. If there was a logjam to break up, it was over the issue of whether autonomy was an interim or permanent solution to the issue of sovereignty.
That matter was only going to arise once the autonomy package had been finalised. Habibie, his ministers and officials were already contemplating how to tackle that issue. There are signs they would have given ground when the time came, regardless of the Howard letter.
Perhaps a bigger motivation for Downer in proposing the letter to the Prime Minister was anxiety about keeping apace with changes to Labor Party policy and ensuring Australia was not left on the sidelines internationally.