> >The brutality in Palestine is unconscionable. When is the last time we > heard about East Timor? Or has it fallen off the map? Even Colombia no > longer merits a mention.<
Here's a couple of recent items on East Timor. I have a recent statement by Foreign Minister Dr Jose Ramos-Horta to the UN Security Council if anyone is interested. Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Maggie Helwig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 3:12 PM Subject: [Tapol-etimor-l] SMH/Hamish McDonald: Timor Gas Billions All At Sea Sydney Morning Herald March 27, 2002 Timor gas billions all at sea By Hamish McDonald, International Editor Australia yesterday announced it would no longer submit to international legal rulings on maritime boundaries - after leading lawyers advised East Timor that Canberra was poised to rob it of tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue. The Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, and the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said Australia would henceforth exclude maritime boundaries from compulsory dispute settlements in the International Court of Justice - the "World Court" sitting at The Hague - and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. The statement came after a weekend seminar in Dili heard expert legal advice that East Timor should own most of the biggest natural gas fields so far discovered in the sea, including the huge Greater Sunrise resource being developed by Woodside, Shell, Phillips and Osaka Gas. The former head of the United States oil company Unocal, John Imle, also disputed the widely accepted view that the deep Timor Trench, north of these fields, blocked a pipeline to East Timor. This view has been the basis of plans to land the gas near Darwin, giving billions of dollars in industrial spin-offs to Australia. East Timor may be offered the funds to mount a case at the World Court by a US oil company, PetroTimor, which has a separate dispute with Canberra over offshore oil concessions. The prospect has rung alarm bells in the Federal and Northern Territory governments, although the offices of Mr Williams and Mr Downer denied yesterday's decision was linked to the Timor Sea issue, and had been considered "for quite some time". The ministers said "Australia's strong view is that any maritime boundary dispute is best settled by negotiation rather than litigation". It is not clear, however, that Canberra has evaded a World Court case. A lawyer advising PetroTimor, Ron Nathans of the Sydney law firm Deacons, said the announcement did not mean Australia was immediately out of the court's ambit. "Australia is not out of it today," Mr Nathans said. "Australia cannot just walk away." The advice has also caused consternation in East Timor, which has been getting ready to sign a petroleum development treaty with Australia, based on current boundaries and giving a revenue split in the joint zone of 90:10 in Dili's favour, almost as soon as it attains independence. East Timor's chief negotiator, Mari Alkatiri, who is likely to be the new nation's first prime minister, has flown hurriedly to London with a UN legal officer to seek urgent advice. Mr Nathan said although the draft treaty with Australia, agreed by negotiators last July, set aside any boundary disputes, it could be seen as acquiescence in claims by parties affected by a future attempt to change the boundaries. The Dili seminar heard advice from two international law experts, Professor Vaughan Lowe of Oxford University and the Sydney barrister Christopher Ward, that current maritime law would swing the lateral boundaries of East Timor's offshore zone to the east and west, giving it at least 80 per cent of the Greater Sunrise fields and potentially 100 per cent - as opposed to the 20 per cent under present boundaries. A leading oil and gas engineer, Geoffrey McKee, said that over the economic life of Greater Sunrise - 2009 to 2050 - such changed boundaries would give East Timor up to $US36 billion ($68 billion) more in government revenue than the $US8 billion it can now expect. Australia's share would shrink from $US28 billion to nothing. East Timor could expect to add almost $US4 billion more from the small Laminaria/Corallina oil fields on the western side of the joint zone, and from the Bayu-Undan field inside the zone. _______________________________________________ Tapol-etimor-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/tapol-etimor-l ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~ - > Access Your PC from Anywhere It's Easy. It's Fun. - Free Download. http://us.click.yahoo.com/v7DM_D/7XkDAA/JLMGAA/6xSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Indonesia Human Rights Committee is a solidarity organization which aims to build links between the people of New Zealand and Indonesia by developing network with the groups in Indonesia dan around the world who are working for human rights and democracy in Indonesia. Being interested is not enough, get involved! IHRC, P.O. Box 68 419, Newton, Auckland. Phone/fax: 64-9- 376 9098, Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you do not wish to belong to IHRC-NZ, you may unsubscribe by sending an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ---- Subject: [IHRC-NZ] Letter to Min Foreign Affairs Australian intercepts about East Timor crimes Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 18:28:19 +1200 From: Maire Leadbeater <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: ihrc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> CC: Mathew Dearnaley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 24 March, 2002 Rt Hon Phil Goff, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Parliament Buildings, Wellington. Dear Phil Goff, In the past week the Australian media has covered shocking revelations that the Australian government deliberately concealed evidence that it had received that senior Indonesian generals were plotting violence in East Timor. This cover-up persisted, even after the massacres that followed the vote on the territory's independence in 1999. In view of the close co-operation between the New Zealand and Australian intelligence and defence agencies, especially the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Australian Defence Signals Directorate, we would like an urgent reply to the following questions: Did New Zealand also have advance warning of the Indonesian plans to derail the United Nations mandated process of self-determination in East Timor in 1999? What action is New Zealand taking to ensure that those responsible for these crimes against humanity will be brought to account before an impartial international tribunal? What action will New Zealand take to encourage Australia to pass on to the United Nations full and complete information from their intelligence intercepts? Can we be assured that the New Zealand government does not propose to resume either military or intelligence exchanges with Indonesia. We believe that these questions are especially urgent because right now a flawed process to try only a selected few of those responsible for East Timor atrocities is under way in Jakarta. General Timbul Silaen and ex-Governor Abilio Soares face charges, but the list of eighteen men does not include the most senior generals who as the evidence indicates, planned and directed the atrocities from Jakarta. It is anticipated that only light sentences may be imposed and it is widely believed that the trials have been designed to head off a full international tribunal such as that being created in the Hague for the former Yugoslavia. A further reason for urgency is that both Australia and the United States are moving to resume a level of defence training and intelligence sharing links with Indonesia. We are appalled by this military and intelligence rapprochement which we believe signals to Indonesia that their military leaders can continue to enjoy impunity for heinous crimes. There are several prominent examples of post East Timor military and government careers which have flourished at the expense of other repressed peoples in Indonesia. General Mahidin Simbolon, who in the intercepts refers to a militia group as his "crew", is now commanding the military in West Papua. Retired General Hendropriyono, who according to the intercepts set up the camps in West Timor for the deportees, is now the head of Indonesia's National Intelligence Body. Defence sources in Canberra have given details of how electronic eavesdroppers intercepted secret messages between the Indonesian officers who ran a campaign of murderous violence to undermine the 1999 referendum. This is the first time that there have been leaks of raw Defence Signals Directorate data relating to a contemporary event, and it is believed that the leak is an indication of a deep disquiet within defence circles. The intercepts reveal that the pro- Indonesian militias guilty of the worst atrocities were taking their orders from the highest members of the military hierarchy. The international editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Hamish McDonald, was shown transcripts of two kinds of intercepts – "Secret Spoke", which refers to ordinary telephone calls, and "Top Secret Umbra", meaning scrambled or encrypted conversations. The intercepts show that two units of Indonesia's special forces, codenamed Venus and Tribuana, went to East Timor early in 1999 for undercover operations. In one telephone intercept, the military commander in East Timor, Colonel Tono Suratman at the time, told notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres not to contact him directly but via another officer. The covert chain of command was headed by President Habibie's co-ordinating minister for politics and security, General Feisal Tanjung and went down to army generals and colonels on the ground in East Timor. When - to their enormous surprise - the covert terror campaign did not work these officers organised the forced deportation of one third of East Timor's population and the near total destruction of East Timor's infrastructure. The intercepts also show that two other cabinet ministers who were also former generals assisted - A.M. Hendropriyono and Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah. Even as an Australian-led multinational force was arriving in the ruins of East Timor in September 1999 the DSD intercepted a telephone call from the Indonesian military to a Timorese supporter to tell him about assassination squads called "Kiper-9", which were hunting down deserters and supporters of independence. We look forward to your reply detailing the New Zealand Government's response to this new information and response to our specific questions, Yours sincerely, Maire Leadbeater (for the Indonesia Human Rights Committee) Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT Indonesia Human Rights Committee is a solidarity organization which aims to build links between the people of New Zealand and Indonesia by developing network with the groups in Indonesia dan around the world who are working for human rights and democracy in Indonesia. Being interested is not enough, get involved! IHRC, P.O. Box 68 419, Newton, Auckland. Phone/fax: 64-9- 376 9098, Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you do not wish to belong to IHRC-NZ, you may unsubscribe by sending an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
