Sydney – Australia "isn't just a charity" and would protect its own interests in a territorial dispute with East Timor involving potentially billions of dollars from oil and gas reserves, the foreign minister said Tuesday.
The two countries have been embroiled in a bitter row over where to draw the maritime boundary between them – a line that will ultimately decide who will keep up to US$30 billion in oil and gas revenue.
Energy companies last year suspended plans to tap the Greater Sunrise gas field – the largest in the Timor Sea that divides Australia's north coast from the impoverished half-island nation – because the two sides failed to meet a Christmas deadline to reach a border settlement.
Negotiations resumed Tuesday in Dili, with officials from both countries expected to discuss a possible compromise.
East Timor wants the border in the middle of the 600 kilometers of sea separating the two. But Australia wants the same boundary it agreed with Indonesia, which occupied East Timor from 1975-1999. In some places, that boundary is just 150 kilometers from East Timor's coast.
Under the proposed solution, Australia will pay compensation to East Timor in return for Dili postponing its demand for a greater share of the seabed. The boundary question would be shelved until the energy resources were exhausted.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard ordered his troops to lead a multinational peacekeeping force in East Timor that ended widespread bloodshed by Indonesian military-backed militias after the territory overwhelmingly voted for independence in 1999.
"I'm sure East Timor wouldn't be the independent country it is today if it hadn't been for the Howard government," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio Tuesday.
"Australia isn't just a charity," he said. "The Australian government and the Australian people have their own interests and they have to be protected."
Downer said Australia wasn't prepared to alter the maritime boundary it negotiated with Indonesia, but would back a settlement that gave East Timor a steady revenue flow from the oil and gas reserves.