| SINCE 1975, INDONESIA has openly
defied two calls by the United Nations Security Council to withdraw its troops
from East Timor. During the course of its invasion and occupation of the small,
agricultural island-nation, Indonesian troops have tortured and assassinated many
tens of thousands of Timorese. Now, in spite of the standing Security Council
requirement that Indonesia withdraw "without delay," Australia has launched a
joint project with Indonesia to garner the invasion's economic spoils.
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Starting
in early 1992, leading multinationals under license from the Australian and Indonesian
governments are due to begin exploring for oil and gas in East Timor's offshore
waters. The ruling Indonesian regime led by President Suharto considers East Timor
to be an Indonesian province. The UN does not recognize this claim--and sees
the occupation as illegal--but Australia and Indonesia have taken East Timor's
seabed and divided it between themselves along lines specified in the Timor Gap
Treaty, which they signed in 1989. Australian oil technicians say that the
Timor seabed could yield some of the world's most productive oil fields. British
Petroleum (BP), Shell and Chevron are among the companies that are said to have
expressed interest in placing bids for the drilling rights by the October 7 deadline
this year. But representatives of the East Timorese living under occupation say
the seabeds are not Indonesia's or Australia's to exploit.
Portugal,
which the UN recognizes as East Timor's administering power, has brought suit
before the International Court of Justice (World Court) to block the Timor Gap
exploration. Jose Ramos Horta, an exiled leader of the Timorese independence movement,
calls the Timor Gap Treaty "daylight train robbery." He points out that as Australia
was making its deal with Indonesia, it was also joining the war against Iraq.
Australia "sent warships to a conflict 20,000 miles away in the name of international
law, but says that international law allows Indonesia to invade and annex East
Timor." Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans says that "there is no binding
legal obligation not to recognize acquisition of territory that was acquired by
force."
International law, however, includes clear prohibitions
against aggressive armed seizures of foreign territory. The Declaration on Principles
of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States--a
1970 measure which Australia sponsored and supported when it passed the UN General
Assembly-- says: "the territory of a state shall not be the object of acquisition
by another state resulting from the threat or use of force. No territorial acquisition
resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal." But,
as is often the case in international (and domestic) affairs, events are turning
less on what the law says, than on whether those with power choose to obey it
or whether they allow it to be enforced.
The legal standing of the Declaration, for
example, was affirmed by the World Court in 1986. In a case brought by Nicaragua
against the United States for its contra war, the Court ruled that by invading
Nicaraguan territory, the United States had violated the Declaration. It ordered
the United States to halt its attacks on Nicaragua and pay damages. Washington,
however, announced that it would not accept the World Court's jurisdiction. It
refused to pay the damages, continued with the attacks and later held back aid
from the U.S.-sponsored Chamorro government when it at first declined to withdraw
the case.
The United States has, in other cases, accepted the Court's
authority and brought cases before it (as, for example, when it sued Iran for
holding the U.S. Embassy hostages), but in the Nicaraguan case Washington simply
refused to obey--and the UN took no steps to make it comply. Reaction to the attack
on East Timor has followed a similar course. Though the Security Council passed
two resolutions deploring the Indonesia invasion, the United States successfully
lobbied to prevent the UN from taking any action to enforce them. At the time
of the invasion, the U.S. State Department later reported, 90 percent of the weapons
of the Indonesian armed forces were provided by the United States. The attack
was launched less than 48 hours after President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger
conferred in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with Indonesia's Suharto.
The Ford-Suharto meeting was followed, after the invasion, by an increase
in U.S. military aid. Australian officials have said that, in Foreign Minister
Evans' words, the invasion involved
"unhappy circumstances and indeed, possible illegality." Yet Australia has responded
by pursuing a policy which holds that, as Evans puts it, "Indonesian sovereignty
over the territory [of East Timor] should be accepted not only on a de facto but
on a de jure basis." In 1974, Australia had begun trying to negotiate a Timor
seabed deal with Portugal. East Timor, at the time, was a Portuguese colony. But
the talks broke down. |
