Urgent meeting on Timor must take delicate route

By Greg Ansley and John Armstrong

Even before the dramatic boycott of Apec by Indonesian President Jusuf Habibie, today's hastily convened special meeting of foreign ministers on East Timor was treading a difficult path through regional sensitivities.

The product of intense lobbying by New Zealand and Australia, by late yesterday its participants were still, with the exception of Japan, confined to an Anglo-Saxon club chaired by Canada and including the United States.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura was expected to confirm Tokyo's support for peacekeepers, although with constitutional constraints on foreign deployments and Second World War memories, Japan's contribution would be confined to financial aid, similar to its $US200 million ($385 million) aid package for Kosovo.

But members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), including Indonesian representatives, were last night meeting as anger grew that Timor had been pushed into the Apec process by Western Governments.

Indonesia refused to take part in the ministerial meeting and it seems likely Foreign Minister Ali Alatas will remain at home with Mr Habibie.

China, with its own human rights difficulties and ambitions in Southeast Asia, has declined to take part and has blocked it from the Apec agenda.

The Asean meeting showed clearly that others in the region are reluctant to kick Indonesia's shins, especially with Jakarta's repeated refusal to allow the United Nations to deploy its proposed force of up to 7000 peacekeepers.

Yesterday, as Jakarta dug in its heels, the lobbying intensified.

Following Prime Minister Jenny Shipley's discussions with United States President Bill Clinton and Australia's John Howard, Foreign Minister Don McKinnon spoke to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy.

Across the Tasman, Mr Howard made a similar round of calls, obtaining reluctant US agreement for logistic support at least for a UN force, and the deployment of a Royal Navy warship to Timor.

His Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, also made clear to Mrs Albright Canberra's expectation of US participation in return for past Australian support for America.

Australia has accepted the lead role in the proposed force, with a firm offer of 2000 troops.

New Zealand has turned the frigate Te Kaha back from the Gulf to the Timor Sea and has offered helicopters and 350 troops.

Timor has become a nightmare, confronting the region not only with human tragedy on a vast scale but also with diplomatic and economic complexities that may last years beyond the immediate crisis.

President Habibie needs to overcome formidable domestic political forces opposed to peacekeepers in Timor.

His lame-duck presidency is floundering in the vacuum created by the transition to democracy and is under siege from an Army determined to maintain a grip on power.

All fear that defeat in Timor will spark a Balkanisation of the ethnically and religiously fragmented archipelago of 211 million people.

The declaration of martial law, with a vague hint that peacekeepers might be permitted if that fails, could be a means of allowing Mr Habibie to steer between conflicting domestic and international pressures.

Canberra's outrage at mass murder and attacks on its diplomatic mission, with the serious strategic implications of instability in so important and close a neighbour, have clashed with a long and delicate process of reconciliation since armed confrontation in the 1960s.

This has borne fruit only in the past decade, with the treaty to jointly exploit the oilfields of the Timor Gap and closening defence ties, including the controversial training of Kompassus special forces units implicated in atrocities.

Australia also carries the baggage of its pragmatic recognition of the 1975 annexation of East Timor, and the economic implications of a massive growth of trade and investment with Indonesia.

Yesterday, however, Mr Howard gave a clear indication that his patience is near an end: "Our aim now is to build the maximum pressure on Indonesia to get its own house in order or, in default, allow in an international peacekeeping force to do the job that should be done by the Indonesian security people."

Today's special meeting will need to produce much more than the rhetoric of outrage.