[Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has returned to East Timor for the first time since the signing of the Timor Sea Treaty in May. The visit highlights the importance of the so-called Greater Sunrise Field, a sticking point between the two countries that was the subject of today's negotiations with the East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkitiri.]

Presenter/Interviewer: Quinton Temby, Dili

Speakers: Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer; East Timor's Prime Minister Mari Alkitiri Temby: Ever since the Timor Sea Treaty was signed on East Timor's first day of independence, the Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri has refused to accept the part of the treaty which gives Australia 80 per cent ownership of the multi-billion dollar Greater Sunrise gas field. Australia's response has been to insist that a separate Unitization Agreement which would allow the development of Greater Sunrise to go ahead under Australian terms, be signed prior to ratification of the treaty. This dispute has caused a deadlock in negotiations which Foreign Minister Alexander Downer must having been hoping to break today.

Downer: "We had a very useful mornings discussion with the Prime Minister and with other officials here in East Timor. We want to conclude all of the details of the negotiations we have with East Timor on the unitization of the Greater Sunrise resource before the end of the year consistent with a memorandum of understanding that the two prime ministers of Australia and East Timor signed on the 20th of May this year. We're not placing undue pressure on anybody, but we are taking the view that it's in East Timor's interests as well as of course Australia's interests to get all of the outstanding issues that we can resolve consistent with a Timor Sea treaty, we get those issues resolved as quickly as possible. And we have a memorandum of understanding already on concluding the unitization agreement by the 31st of December."

Temby: Prime Minister Alkatiri, however, seems to have hardened his position on Greater Sunrise. He wants to create a second Joint Petroleum Development Area or JPDA to govern the disputed field.

Alkatiri: "What I have been making clear that we will never accept a linkage between Timor Gap as a JPDA, Joint Petroleum Development Area and agreement on unitization. Because we already adopted our law and our claims are clear. What Australians think is under their jurisdiction, we claim as ours. That is why our overlapping claim has to be treated as a zone with overlappping claims. Zone out of JDPA. And that is why we think that we have to ratify the treaty, without linking the treaty itself with Sunrise."

Temby: So it's mainly an issue of who has what share of Great Sunrise?

Alkatiri: "Of course, of course. It is very important having two per cent of Greater Sunrise, or one hundred per cent of Greater sunrise."

Temby: You want one hundred per cent?

Alkatiri: "Our claim is one hundred per cent, yes."

Temby: While Australia has indicated that the treaty won't be ratified until next year at the earliest, and a hold up in the process would deprive East Timor of vital revenue, Prime Minister Alkatiri doesn't seem to be wavering. Instead he's begun looking in to petroleum exploration with oil companies from allied countries such as Angola.

Alkatiri: "With or without the ratification of Timor Sea Treaty we are going to begin the other activities on oil and gas, onshore and maybe around country, twelve miles around the country."