Minding independence

Independence challenges

20 May will see the birth of the millennium’s newest nation: East Timor. Three years since the 1999 vote for autonomy that sparked off the massacre of more than one thousand people by the Indonesian military and their militias, the UN administration will hand over to the government of Xanana Gusmao.

So, after the much-warranted party, what faces the new country? Well, exactly one week before the celebrations begin, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has given the country a clear reminder of the scale of the task ahead. According to its report, released on Monday, East Timor will begin its new life as “Asia’s poorest nation”. It will be one of the world’s twenty poorest nations, joining the likes of Angola and Bangladesh.

A quarter of a century of Indonesian rule has left the country in a dire condition. The figures make for sobering reading. More than half the population are said to be illiterate. An estimated sixty thousand East Timorese are still living in refugee camps in Indonesia. Per capita gross domestic product is four hundred and seventy-eight dollars. Half the population earn less than fifty-five US cents a day. Sixty-three per cent live on less than two dollars a day.

As UNDP East Timor director Finn Reske-Nielsen acknowledged after launching the report, international support will be crucial, both financially and in terms of security. While there is hope for substantial foreign donation, East Timor plans to build its success on strong relations with its neighbours.

Gusmao seems keen to enable the people of his country to put the past firmly behind them. The East Timor Council of Ministers has agreed to spend almost half the budget of the next year on improving public health and education – the highest of any country in the Asia-Pacific region – and only nine per cent on defence. Rather than focus on revenge against the aggressors against whom he himself fought as a guerilla leader, and spent six years in an Indonesian jail on account of, the new President – who is already being compared to Mandela – is bent on normalising relations with Jakarta.

And with good reason. Dili, the Timorese capital, is eager to claim rights over the oil and gas fields in the Timor sea. The UNDP report stated that the country’s potential revenue from these resources will be a key to its success. Sea boundaries will have to be negotiated.

Beyond that, East Timor has other prizes in its sights. The first is membership of the UN itself, which should be a foregone conclusion. But it also wants to join Asean, the security and economic alliance of South East Asian nations. Membership should help ease relations with Indonesia, as well as opening up access to neighbours Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. It aims to play a major role in developing strong “South-South relations” with other developing nations in the Asian region. The main obstacle is Burma – unhappy at Gusmao’s criticism of its regime. But overall, membership looks likely.

Other possibilities include joining the South Pacific Forum, and Indonesia has floated the idea of a West Pacific Forum which would like Australia, East Timor, Indonesia, and possibly Papua New Guinea. Look out for that one.

Still, frustration remains about the lack of progress made in bringing to justice those responsible for the post-referendum killings of 1999. Back then, there were many calls for an international human rights tribunal to be set up to investigate. But the UN stalled, accepting Indonesian reassurances that the guilty would be brought to justice in their own country. A human rights tribunal was only set up in Jakarta in March this year, following intense international pressure. Top militia leader Eurico Guterres and seventeen others have been charged with crimes against humanity. But it looks unlikely that prosecutions will occur.

With middle-ranking officials being lined up as scapegoats, it appears the ringleaders of the massacre will not be brought to justice, with state prosecutors unwilling to see senior officers imprisoned. Guterres insists that “responsibility should lie with the Portuguese and Indonesian governments and the United Nations, whose agreement on holding the referendum was the cause of everything that happened.”

Meanwhile, international pressure is no longer going East Timor’s way. Since 11 September, the US has been desperate to enlist the support of the Indonesian military in its “war on terror”. The last thing it wants is to encourage the prosecution of Indonesia’s senior officers. East Timor might never get the justice it deserves, but it is ready this week to face the world on its own terms – as a free and independent state.

(Sources: BBC online, International Herald Tribune. See also World Diary 18 April)

Orange alert

“We would be sending our troops to invade the Netherlands.”

So said Representative David Obey (Democrat, Wisconsin) this week. To what can he have been referring?

Actually, he was asking Tom Delay, the majority whip in the US House of Representatives, whether he understood the implications of his provision to the new appropriations bill that contains 29.4 billion dollars for military and domestic security spending. According to Obey, the Netherlands had better be on its guard.

With the full support of the Bush administration, Delay announced that the bill would, in the words of the New York Times, “include authorisation for the President to use force to rescue any American held by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to bar arms aid to the nations that ratify the court treaty.”

The Appropriations Committee voted thirty-eight to eighteen to adopt the plan, after being told by Delay that his provision would ensure that the US would never witness an “American soldier or elected leader dragged before this court.” The ICC was referred to as “rump” and “rogue”.

The bill also ensures that the Bush administration will refuse to co-operate in any way with the ICC and refuse extradition of anyone sought by the court. Delay said that both Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell had “endorsed this in its entirety.”

Obey proved that some of members of the Appropriations Committee didn’t know that the court would be in The Hague. Delay, meanwhile, refused to answer the question about the Netherlands.

Gone Caracas

To Venezuela again. Following the receipt this week of a disgruntled communication from Cambodia about its Venezuelan coverage of 2 May, the Diary has chosen to take another look.

The latest reports on the two-day ousting of President Chavez complicate the situation further. Greg Palast, a reporter for the BBC’s Newsnight, claims to have gained an understanding of why the coup was so unsuccessful. And yes, US fingerprints are in evidence.

Palast says that Chavez was warned of a potential US-backed coup in a telephone call from Ali Rodriguez, Secretary-General of OPEC and an old chum of the Venezuelan president who was once a leftist guerilla in the oil-rich country. Apparently, Rodriguez told Chavez that the US was expecting a new Arab oil embargo against the US, in protest against Israeli incursions into the Palestinian territories. It therefore had Venezuela in its sights as a replacement oil-provider. Chavez, friend of Saddam and Fidel, self-proclaimed Maoist and enemy of the US, had to go.

Palast claims that the ’phone call saved Chavez’s government and probably his life. With advance warning he was able to place his own troops in strategic points around his palace.

What went unmentioned was that at the end of last month, Ali Rodriguez was appointed head of Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil company at the center of the coup activity.

Meanwhile, Chavez insists he has evidence that the US supported and backed the coup, and his supporters believe that plots abound to assassinate their leader. The US continues to deny the claims, and the State Department has set up an investigation into the role of its officials in the coup.

It seems definite that officials – including Otto Reich – met with opposition leaders just before the siege (which came a mere four days after Saddam announced his own temporary oil embargo). But Chavez claims that he also owns radar images showing a US military vessel, plane and helicopter invading Venezuelan sea and air space. The US says its only vessels near the place were Coast Guard ships operating to combat drug trafficking.

As yet, no evidence has been forthcoming, and as these ‘official investigations’ begin, mystery continues to surround the events.

Quotes of the week

“It is no secret that for almost a century there have not been optimal relations between the two states.”
Fidel Castro, setting the record straight about US-Cuba relations as he greeted former president Jimmy Carter on a five-day tour of his nation.

“It doesn’t concern me if he didn’t come to the camp and shake hands with me. He’s someone who doesn’t let us do operations.”
Sujood Hawashin, an eleven-year-old Palestinian, referring to Yasser Arafat’s decision not to greet the crowd hoping to hear him speak in the Jenin refugee camp, and his vocal opposition to suicide-bombing missions against Israel. (Quoted in the New York Times)

“It is very sad when the internal politics of a political party can interfere in the search for peace.”
Javier Solana, head of EU foreign policy, after hearing the news that Prime Minister Sharon’s Likud party had voted never to accept the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

“I think the government should put bombs in hospitals but unfortunately the government doesn’t do it, so it is up to the people to do those things.”
Noam Federman, a spokesman for Kahane Chai, the outlawed Jewish extremist group. Israel announced this week that it had thwarted an attempt by extremists to bomb a girls’ high school and the Mukassad hospital, the main health center for the Palestinians of East Jerusalem. The two buildings are situated next to each other. The bomb was timed to explode when the one thousand five hundred pupils arrived at school.

“He is the type of person who sleeps at 21:30 after watching the domestic news. In the morning, he only reads a few lines about what is written on the Middle East and the world due to his huge responsibilities. I felt it was my duty to spend as long a time as possible to brief him on the facts directly and without an intermediary.”
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, explaining why he had spent hours briefing President Bush on Middle East issues in Texas last month. Prince Abdullah went on to say that Dubya was not well informed about the region, and was deeply moved by images presented to him of Palestinian suffering.

“When I sign the treaty with President Putin in Russia, we will begin the new era of US-Russian relationships, and that’s important … This agreement will liquidate the cold war.”
President Bush, announcing the US-Russia agreement to cut their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds within the next decade.

“That’s our kind of treaty.”
Unnamed senior US administration official, quoted in the New York Times, in reference to the above nuclear arms agreement. The reduction of warheads means that they will be put in storage. By 2012 each side must have no more than 1,700 – 2,200 warheads. Not a single missile launcher or warhead needs to be destroyed, and there is no timetable for the reduction (before 2012 forces can in fact be built up). After then, without a fresh agreement, both countries are free to have as many warheads as they wish.

Contact the Diary editor: dominic.hilton@opendemocracy.net