Political/social crisis

Timor on the tightrope

Sydney Morning Herald - June 24, 2006

Hamish McDonald – In Timor there is the politics of Dili – this lethargic little seaside capital of low white buildings and tall tropical trees, where Portuguese-speaking political leaders drive from meeting to meeting in dark-windowed luxury four-wheel- drives, followed by carloads of bodyguards.

And there is the politics of the mountains, where bands of armed renegades, mostly speaking the common Malay-Portuguese patois of Tetum, sit in occupied properties high above the sea, trying to parlay their moments of notoriety and threat into political and personal concessions from those below.

This week, the two forms of politics collided and merged. Armed rebels and and two of the most senior and revered politicians joined in a single attack.

The immediate target was to oust the Prime Minister, a small, angular man called Mari Alkatiri, who has held a whip hand over the Government in this nation of 970,000 people since it was launched into independence by the United Nations four years ago.

Beyond that, there is a struggle against a bigger monster, Fretilin, the ruling party behind Alkatiri occupying 55 of the 88 seats in the country's parliament, the dominant seat of power under the country's Portuguese-style constitution.

Believing the party was on its way to becoming more powerful than the state itself, the President, Xanana Gusmao, and the Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, the two-best known figures from the struggle against the 24-year Indonesian occupation that ended in 1999, have set out to diminish and tame it. Both once belonged to Fretilin.

Ramos Horta was one of its young founders in 1974-75 in the brief upsurge of local politics between the democratic revolution against fascist rule in the distant imperial capital of Lisbon and the Indonesian invasion. Gusmao took over its armed resistance wing, Falantil, after its first chief, Nicolau Lobato, was killed in 1978.

By the early 1990s, both had left, to make alliances with the more conservative Timorese elements who had tried to work with the Indonesians and who, disillusioned with that experience, saw an opening for independence in post-Cold War international politics.

Instead of the quasi-Marxist regimes formed out of violent liberation struggles in Portuguese Africa, their friends were to be found in the parliaments and church councils in the Western democracies. Ramos Horta simply quit the party and continued the diplomacy that eventually won him a joint Nobel Peace Prize with Dili's stubborn Catholic bishop, Carlos Belo. Gusmao took the entire Falantil with him.

After four years of watching Fretilin run the new country, culminating in the disastrous violence of April and May when the army and police fell to pieces and Australian-led peacekeepers were called in, the two leaders are now on the attack against their former party.

Their thinking is that once Alkatiri and his authoritarian clique, who were exiles in Mozambique, are prised from office, and the United Nations is called in to supervise parliamentary elections next April, they will launch a new, inclusive political party. This, they hope, will recapture the spirit of the all- party National Resistance Committee, which guided the East Timorese through the massive intimidation of the Indonesian authorities and their militias to a successful vote for independence in 1999.

The objection is not so much to the way Fretilin is running the economy. Marxist it is certainly not. The past four years have seen austere budgets, and if anything an over-careful husbanding of the first oil and gas revenues coming from the Timor Sea, which Alkatiri has placed in a Norwegian-model petroleum fund invested with the US Federal Reserve. "These are the best little bunch of neo-liberals you could wish for," said one foreign aid official.

The perceived fault is more Fretilin's Leninist organisation, its squeezing of the weak opposition parties, its nepotism and its pervasive contract padding and kickbacks, though even his opponents concede that Alkatiri is clean. With the independence mood of "Ita mos bele" ("We also can do it") now dissipated, along with the prosperity generated by UN spending from 1999 to 2002, moderate voters would desert Fretilin, leaving it with a rump of diehard radicals. "My sense is that if the election is free and impartial, they would not even cross 40 per cent of the vote," says Joao Mariano Saldanha, an American political and economic analyst advising Gusmao.

But first, Alkatiri. By Tuesday this week, Gusmao and Ramos Horta had closed what they hoped was a fail-proof trap. Since May, they had been aware of what seemed like a fatal overreach by the Prime Minister and the even more disliked former interior minister, Rogerio Lobato, long known to both as a dangerous character trading on his cachet as the brother of resistance leader Nicolau and his own hot temper.

In 1978, with Ramos Horta's then wife Ana Pessoa and young son as hostages, he had lured the envoy back from his annual vigil at the UN General Assembly and kept him prisoner in Maputo in Mozambique for "compromising the independence struggle", at one point lunging at Ramos Horta with a pair of scissors. Eventually, Mozambique authorities intervened.

In 2002, Lobato blackmailed his way into Fretilin's new cabinet by stirring up disgruntled former guerillas like the charismatic "L-7" who had not been inducted into the new 1400-man army. Their threats and blockades ended when Lobato was inducted into the government as interior minister, putting him in charge of the 3500-strong national police. "It was like appointing Al Capone to run the bank or Imelda Marcos to run the shoe factory," said one source close to Ramos Horta and Gusmao. As evidence gathered this week by the Herald showed, Lobato immediately began turning the barely trained police into a rival force to the army, which remained politically neutral with the president as nominal commander-in-chief.

A range of special units were formed, and orders placed for high-powered assault weapons and vast quantities of ammunition. The police commander, Paulo Martins, who had been a colonel in the Indonesian police, was soon at loggerheads with Lobato over the way his force was supposed to support Fretilin.

Events of the past few months are still murky. Why were complaints in the army ranks, by young recruits from the western part of the country about taunts and discrimination by old resistance veterans, mostly from the east, allowed to fester until 591 of the soldiers were led out of their barracks by an officer under a cloud over a smuggling incident? "There was mistake after mistake," says Mario Carrascalao, a leader of the small opposition Social Democratic Party. "A small problem became a big problem."

The soldiers were dismissed in March, and then brought their grievances to Dili, sparking riots on April 28 which saw the army fire on civilians. In May, Alkatiri manoeuvred against a leadership challenge in Fretilin headed by Jose Guterres, Timor's ambassador in the United States, at Fretilin's five-yearly congress. Always the sharpest reader of the rule book, Alkatiri got delegates to agree to an open vote, counting on the climate of fear and official favour in party ranks. Guterres withdrew, and Alkatiri was reaffirmed almost unanimously.

But in following days, Dili lapsed into violence again after dissident military policemen under their commander, Major Alfredo Reinado, started firefights with army units, while deserting police and the dismissed soldiers took control of the western coffee growing centres of Ermera and Gleno.

Then Gusmao became aware of a mysterious third force joining attacks on the army headquarters at Tacitolu, on the outskirts of Dili, on May 24 and 25 in which 11 assailants and soldiers died. As well as Major Reinado's troops, there were mysterious men in badgeless green uniforms, armed with Heckler and Koch 33 automatic rifles like those donated to the police by Malaysia.

Their leader, a local Fretilin organiser and former Falantil guerilla named Vicente da Conceicao, or "Commander Railos", was ready to talk.

With four of his 30 men killed by the army, Railos told Gusmao his group had been armed by the police after a meeting on May 7 with Alkatiri and Lobato, at Alkatiri's house. The Prime Minister and interior minister asked them to form a secret Fretilin security force to intimidate political rivals.

By coincidence or not, the ABC's Four Corners program was also on the case, assembling damning footage of Railos and his ease of contact with Lobato, and releasing a small taste of the documentary eventually broadcast last Monday.

Gusmao had been in contact with Railos several times before, and on Monday dispatched Ramos Horta to take a formal statement from Railos, who by then was singing his story to all-comers, at his group's camp in an old Portuguese mountain fort at Baibao, close to Fazenda Algarve, the Carrascalao coffee plantation.

After a colourful welcome that included a line of cutlass- wielding warriors, rows of men in leather sombreros and women in their best floral sarongs and blouses, and a formal guard of Railos's men, presenting arms with their illegal HK-33 rifles, Railos handed Ramos Horta impeccably printed documents on the group's alleged dealings with Alkatiri and Lobato, in detail down to the serial numbers of the weapons, vehicles and uniforms supplied by the police.

On Tuesday, the Prosecutor-General, Longuinhos Monteiro, issued arrest warrants against Lobato, bringing him before a judge on Thursday to face charges attracting a maximum 15 years' jail.

Gusmao, meanwhile, delivered a letter to Alkatiri. "After seeing the Four Corners program, which enormously shocked me, there is nothing left for me to do except give you the choice," he wrote in Portuguese. "Either you resign, or after hearing the Council of State, I will dismiss you because you no longer deserve my confidence."

But after reeling from the President's threat, and strong criticism in the Council of State on Wednesday, Alkatiri regrouped. The links between him and Railos were tenuously demonstrated, any criminal charges would rely on Lobato's evidence.

Facing a stubborn Alkatiri, Gusmao played what may be his last wild card. On Thursday night, he ended a two-hour televised tirade against Fretilin with a new ultimatum: if Alkatiri did not resign or the party begin moves to sack him, Gusmao would resign himself. "I am ashamed of all the bad things that have happened," he said, adding he "didn't have a brave face to show the people".

But shame may not count in this island's unforgiving political culture.

East Timor asks for UN-led peacekeeping force

Green Left Weekly - June 21, 2006

Jon Lamb – East Timor's foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta formally requested to a special session of the United Nations Security Council on June 14 that the UN Office In East Timor be extended by at least one month to August 22. The Security Council is expected to discuss within the next few weeks extending this further as well as revising the UN's mandate and function in East Timor.

UN general-secretary Kofi Annan said a new and upgraded UN presence was needed in East Timor to help restore order in the wake of the political and social crisis of the last month. Annan told the Security Council that the scaling down of the UN in East Timor had happened too quickly and that "The sad events of recent weeks reflect shortcomings not only on the part of the Timorese leadership but also on the part of the international community in inadequately sustaining Timor-Leste's nation-building process".

The Timorese government asked the council "to establish immediately a United Nations police force in Timor-Leste, to maintain law and order in Dili and other parts of the country as necessary and re-establish confidence among the people, until the PNTL [East Timor National Police] has undergone reorganisation and restructuring so that it can act as an independent and professional law enforcement agency". It added that this force should remain for at least a year, including during the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007.

The East Timorese representative added that while East Timor was deeply indebted to the countries that quickly deployed forces at the government's request, as the emergency situation was nearing an end it was important that attention now be turned to replacing the current force with a peacekeeping force under the UN umbrella, to reduce political and diplomatic tensions.

The representatives of Portugal and Malaysia supported the Timorese request for a UN-led force, while Australia's ambassador to the UN, Robert Hill, proposed that the PNTL be led by an Australian, suggesting former Northern Territory and Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer. He urged that the UN focus on longer term development issues and investigations into recent events, rather than a peacekeeping and security role.

Annan said that it was unlikely that an upgraded UN-led peacekeeping force would be able to take over from the current Australian-led security force for at least six months.

UN special envoy Ian Martin stressed at the council meeting that "there is a pressing need for an impartial investigation of recent events involving loss of life – in particular, the disputed number of killings which occurred in Dili on 28-29 April, and the killing by soldiers of unarmed police officers under United Nations escort [and injury to two UN police officers] on 25 May". He outlined this as the first priority, adding that the UN should play "a major role" in the organisation of the May 2007 elections and that "the review and restoration of the security sector is a crucial task".

In a June 14 speech to parliament, President Xanana Gusmao told the assembly that the state had become "paralysed" and that "the population is suffering from the consequences". He added that the failure of the East Timorese state to deal with the crisis had "frighten[ed] all of us who were elected by the people to ensure stability, security and better living conditions" and that it was now "the time to rebuild, rather than to point out blame". He also stressed that he would be seeking to "continue to fulfil the sacred duty of safeguarding the democratic state" as a "guardian of the constitution".

The announcement by Gusmao signals an easing of political tensions within the political elite and moves away from a push to use constitutional triggers or other means to dissolve the parliament or replace Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. Alkatiri and the Fretilin-led government appear to have, for now, weathered allegations in the Australian media that Alkatiri and former interior minister Rogerio Lobato were behind the creation of a special gang to intimidate and eliminate Alkatiri's opponents.

While overall gang activity in Dili has declined considerably, isolated incidents continue to occur, including some that appear to have a political element, such as threats to and attacks on journalists. Two staff members of the Timor Post were attacked on June 15 and the paper's editor believes this was due to the paper printing articles critical of the prime minister.

East Timorese and UN-sponsored investigations into the recent violence will be a key test of the credibility and moral authority of the East Timorese political elite following the crisis. International prosectors have arrived in Dili and have started collecting evidence.

The results of these investigations and the resolution of the grievances held by the different rebel factions, within both the army and police, will have a strong influence on the political to-and-fro within the East Timorese elite in the lead-up to the 2007 elections. While Fretilin remains the largest, most consolidated national party, opposition parties and groupings may gain stronger support and new alliances are likely to evolve.

Negotiations with various officers leading the different rebel groups in the East Timorese army and police have progressed, albeit slowly.

As the security situation continues to improve, aid agencies are increasingly concerned with the welfare of the large number of internally displaced people in the camps in and around Dili, estimated at 130,000 – around 10% of the entire population of East Timor. A significant proportion of these are children with health problems and poor access to adequate food and aid.

Alkatiri's order: arm these comrades

Sydney Morning Herald - June 20, 2006

Hamish McDonald, Boibao Fort – Clanging gongs and beating drums were background noise to testimony by leaders of an alleged political hit squad that might bring down East Timor's embattled Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri.

Two United Nations prosecutors were heading up to this ruined centuries-old Portuguese fort yesterday to interview Vincente da Concecao, or "Commander Railos", leader of 30 former anti- Indonesian guerillas camped here who say they were armed on Mr Alkatiri's orders as a secret security force of the ruling Fretilin party.

Earlier, Mr da Concecao and his men paraded with 11 German-made automatic rifles before detailing their story to East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta.

Cutlass-wielding local men dressed as warriors in striped sarongs and rooster-feather helmets led a raucous welcome by hundreds of villagers from surrounding coffee plantations, high in mountains west of the capital, Dili.

Mr da Concecao, who was still wearing his identity tag as a delegate to Fretilin's national congress on May 17 to 19, is understood to have told Mr Ramos Horta that he and some others were commissioned at a meeting in Mr Alkatiri's official residence on May 7 with the Prime Minister and then interior minister, Rogerio Lobato, who was in charge of the police.

He said Mr Alkatiri told the interior minister: "Make sure these comrades are provided with weapons." The following day at Liquica, their home town to the west of Dili, they were given the first of 18 Heckler & Koch HK 33 assault rifles supplied by the chief of the police border protection unit, Commandant Antonio da Cruz. They were also given their green military-style uniforms and two four-wheel-drives.

But their account did not repeat allegations Mr da Concecao made on the ABC's Four Corners program last night that his instructions in front of the Prime Minister were to "eliminate" dissident army groups and opposition leaders before next April's elections. Their mission was a vaguer one, to protect Fretilin leaders and intimidate opponents.

Mr Alkatiri has dismissed the claims as part of efforts to "demonise" him but has not yet responded to the detailed allegations. Mr Lobato was dismissed as interior minister three weeks ago.

The Railos squad became disillusioned after Mr Lobato sent them to attack the East Timorese army headquarters at Tibar, on the outskirts of Dili, on May 25. Four of them were killed in a gun battle with soldiers, some of them former comrades in the resistance.

Mr da Concecao said he was "happy" with today's meeting, which is expected to result in a visit by the President, Xanana Gusmao, to receive the weapons in return for protection by the Australian- led peacekeeping force.

Mr Ramos Horta went straight to report his findings to Mr Gusmao after returning to Dili yesterday and was later going to confront Mr Alkatiri with Mr da Concecao's allegations.

"What I heard [was] very disturbing in regard to allegations that weapons were distributed to civilian individuals," he said. "I do not form a judgement whether these allegations are based on solid evidence." The prosecutors are expected to report within a week.

Meanwhile, more pressure was building on Mr Alkatiri, as opposition demonstrators were starting to arrive in Dili for three days of protests seeking his resignation. Australian and Malaysian troops were checking arriving vehicles for weapons.

Stoking the fires

ABC Four Corners - June 19, 2006

Reporter: Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson: As international forces assist East Timor emerge from violence and mayhem, the political push is now on to force the country's Prime Minister, Dr Mari Alkatiri, to stand down. Alkatiri is a terrorist, a communist, a Muslim, say the men at this rally up in the hills to Foreign Minister Ramos Horta. The rumours about Dr Alkatiri are many and wild. But evidence is thin on the ground. It's here we're told, for the first time, that Alkatiri ordered his Minister for the Interior to hand over weapons to a secret civilian security team.

Major Tara, F-FDTL (translation): These weapons were given by Rogerio Lobato but were authorised by Mari to give to the members of Fretilin Congress.

Liz Jackson: This is what you believe?

Major Tara, F-FDTL (translation): This happened. It happened many times over.

Liz Jackson: Tonight East Timor's Commissioner of Police reveals to Four Corners documentary evidence that the Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri knew one of his ministers was arming civilians. He knows how damaging this could be.

Liz Jackson: Are you fearful of the consequences?

Paulo Martins, Commissioner of Police, PNTL: Consequences, yeah. Maybe they have to make some trouble with me.

Liz Jackson: While life is returning to the streets of Dili, thousands of refugees are still too scared to return to their homes. They don't trust that it's over yet. The threats, the rivalries, the political intrigues that enflamed the violence, all remain unresolved. Tonight on Four Corners we seek to uncover how it could come to this. It's around 8am at police headquarters in the East Timorese capital of Dili.

Every morning now, the police who have not abandoned their jobs put on their uniforms and go through the motions of pretending they still have authority and a job they can do. The reality is they're not allowed out on the streets for fear of provoking further violence and mayhem. But it's important for morale to keep up the parades. Inspector Afonso de Jesus is today the senior officer of the PNTL, as the Timorese Police Force is known. It's just over three weeks since seven of his colleagues were shot dead in cold blood after a gun battle with the country's army – the FDTL.

Liz Jackson: Why was the army opening fire on the police?

Inspector Afonso de Jesus, PNTL: I don't know the reason why they are firing on us.

Liz Jackson: The bloodstains are still on the stairwell where police were hit by the incoming fire. It's not the first time that rivalry between the police and the military has erupted into violence. The army has increasingly resented the aid money, weapons and resources poured into establishing a police force when it was members of the army who fought for Timor's independence. On the morning when the gun battle was raging, Inspector Afonso got a call from the Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

Inspector Afonso de Jesus, PNTL: He called me by phone and said, "It's OK. Afonso, you should stop the firing". But I responded to the Prime Minister, "OK, we are not firing but the FDTL still keep attacking us in this building." After that...

Liz Jackson: So the Prime Minister rang you and said, "Could the police stop firing?"

Inspector Afonso de Jesus, PNTL: Stop the firing. And they think that we are the ones who are firing. But as I said, we are not firing.

Liz Jackson: The gun battle was being observed with mounting alarm by United Nations police and military advisors. At around 11am two of them made a fateful plea to their boss, head of the UN mission, Sukehiro Hasegawa.

Sukehiro Hasegawa: They came to me and they felt very strongly that they have the ability to stop the firing. Both sides, they know FDTL officers and also PNTL officers.

Liz Jackson: The UN officials talked with the head of the military and with senior police. Assurances were given, a deal was made – if the police surrendered their weapons, the army would allow the unarmed officers safe passage out of their compound under UN escort.

Many of the police were reluctant. It was inspector Afonso's job to persuade them. You personally asked three police officers to give up their weapons?

Inspector Afonso de Jesus, PNTL: Yeah, weapons. All our weapons we surrendered to Mr Fernando Reis and also the other friends from the UNPOL.

Liz Jackson: Within minutes of emerging, the police officers were gunned down. This was the aftermath. Four people were shot dead on the road. Three died later in the UN compound. 25 were wounded.

Witnesses say two or three men in army uniforms had been waiting for them down at the corner of the road. No-one is officially saying who gave the order to shoot but this shocking event revealed to the world how close East Timor was to a bloody collapse into a failed state.

Sukehiro Hasegawa: They shot at Timorese police officers and they carefully avoided the UN police officers. It was incredible that UN police officers were not shot to death.

Liz Jackson: So it was not random?

Sukehiro Hasegawa: No. It was very well... In fact, perhaps a planned attack.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: I was very clear to Mr Hasegawa that as a government we are open for investigation, to investigate all the situations, including this one.

Liz Jackson: You will investigate all the situations that have occurred?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yes.

Liz Jackson: Prime Minister Alkatiri arrives at the National Parliament building under the protection of Australian soldiers. Even with protection he can no longer mix with the people he governs. He was never a popular figure before and now given the chaos in the country, his leadership is under siege.

Prime Minister Alkatiri, I'm from Four Corners.

Alkatiri spent the 25 years of the independence struggle in exile, mostly in Marxist Mozambique. He returned at the end of 1999.

Liz Jackson: People say of the Prime Minister that he has an arrogant and aloof style and is a Marxist. Are they right?

Dr Jose Teixeira, Deputy Minister for Natural Resources, Minerals and Energy Policy: I think he's far from being a Marxist. I work closely with him. If you look at the policies that the government has adopted in terms of developing the private sector, driven, policies driven largely also by the Prime Minister. So I think that that accusation, that he's a Marxist, falls very, very foul.

Liz Jackson: Jose Teixeira is the PM's spokesman. A former Brisbane lawyer, he left East Timor when he was 11, returning in 2002. Work today is organising last-minute details for a visit from Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. Teixeira believes that Dr Alkatiri's tough stance in the negotiations over oil and gas rights in the Timor Gap won him no friends in Canberra. Do you feel that there's been pressure from the Australian Government in terms of who should run this country?

Dr Jose Teixeira: Look, I'm sure that this Prime Minister and this government are not the favourites of people in Canberra, and I don't just mean the political personalities in Canberra, but others that form part of the Canberra establishment.

Liz Jackson: Alexander Downer arrives half an hour late. He and his entourage had gone to see one of the Prime Minister's political rivals, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, first. So Dr Alkatiri keeps them waiting now.

Alexander Downer: Oh, hello, Prime Minister.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Foreign Minister.

Liz Jackson: Alkatiri was not as keen as Ramos Horta to seek international military assistance, but he signed on the dotted line. He says he's getting no foreign pressure to resign before elections scheduled in six to nine months time.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: No, up to now, I haven't got any pressure from any governments. Of course, some people have been... delivered some statements that it will be better for the solution of the conflict if the Prime Minister stepped down, but I think that this is, is not a... It's unfair, but I don't really consider it as a pressure.

Liz Jackson: Who are you singling out, then?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: You know very well who I am singling out.

Dr Jose Ramos Horta, Minister for Foreign Affairs: The problem is, obviously, can the country afford the next six months, nine months of this continued pressure on the Prime Minister to resign? Can we afford this increasing loss of credibility of the government and poor image of the country? Or should the Prime Minister say, "Well, I step aside in the interests of my own party. It seems that I am liability to my own party, if not to the country.

Liz Jackson: The pressure began two months ago. There was a 5-day demonstration by 600 sacked army officers – known as the petitioners – and their supporters. They claim they suffer discrimination because unlike most of the senior army officers, they came from the west of the country, near the Indonesian border. They say they're portrayed as collaborators with Indonesia, while the easterners take all the credit for the independence struggle. By the middle of the day, hooligans had swelled the crowd and it turned ugly. Rocks were thrown, cars were torched, the regular police lost control, and the riot police in black opened fire. By late in the day, the mayhem had spread. The Prime Minister called in the army. By nightfall, 60 people had been shot. Five people were dead.

Liz Jackson: Did you authorise those troops to fire on the demonstration?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: No. One thing is to call the troops to help police to control the situation. The other thing is to fire against the demonstration. I made it clear, the instructions were clear, to control, to get them away and not to follow...to go after them.

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: The Defence Force must not be brought to, uh... prevent or to stop civil unrest, because they are not trained for that. And you never know for sure the consequences when they enter in the city. And without consulting the head of state – particularly someone like Xanana Gusmao, who has an exceptionally good political instinct, that is, yes, a grave error of judgement.

Liz Jackson: Over the following the days, warring factions of the security forces turned on each other. Gangs of hooligans roamed the streets, 45 homes were burnt to the ground. People were shot and stabbed, some were burnt alive. More than 14,000 people fled their homes in terror and camped in the grounds of churches, embassies and out near the airport. 70 per cent of police deserted their posts and a rebel army faction took their cars and their guns to the hills in solidarity with the petitioners. Their leader, Major Alfredo Reinado, remains there still, demanding that Alkatiri resigns.

Major Alfredo Reinado, Military Police, F-FDTL: I think he has to step back from the position and face their investigation, and if they prove he did do anything wrong with his leadership, he will go and face the court then.

Liz Jackson: Two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Ramos Horta arrives at the presidential office to be sworn in as the new Minister for Defence. Following the violence, the Interior Minister and the Minister for Defence have both been pressured to stand down. Is that fair?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Yes, that's absolutely fair, because ministers in other countries stand down for minor offences, so that as a first step, that is fair.

Liz Jackson: On that basis, should the Prime Minister, as the head of the government, resign for precisely the same reasons?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: I knew if I had answered this question, your next question would be precisely... that one. So, I prefer to abstain from responding to this question.

Liz Jackson: Foreign ambassadors and the United Nations crowd into a small backroom to witness the swearing in. Everyone is waiting for the President Xanana Gusmao to arrive, including, at the back, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. Three days before, the President publicly announced that he was assuming principle responsibility for security issues.

Liz Jackson: Has the actions of the President undermined any authority that the Prime Minister has in terms of his capacity to govern this country?

Dr Jose Teixeira: I'm not going to comment on that.

Liz Jackson: No comment?

Dr Jose Teixeira: No comment, no.

Liz Jackson: Has the President placed any pressure on you to resign?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Who?

Liz Jackson: The President.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: No, never. The President is one of the stronger defender of the Constitution here in this country.

Liz Jackson: President Xanana Gusmao arrives. While publicly maintaining a semblance that they're working together, it's widely known that Xanana Gusmao has sought legal advice about whether under Timor's constitution he has the power to sack Alkatiri. The short answer is no – not without a parliamentary vote of no confidence. And in the parliament, Alkatiri's Fretilin Party has the numbers. The only provision that would force the Prime Minister to stand aside is if he were charged with a serious criminal offence. The rift between the Prime Minister and the President goes back 20 years, when Gusmao left the Fretilin Party to adopt a more centrist, more inclusive, less hardline stance.

Xanana gusmao in parliament: Dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, it was not supposed to be so solemn ceremony. But we must recognise that, because of the situation, it is a special one.

Liz Jackson: Would you describe the relationship between the President and the Prime Minister as the President being very supportive of the Prime Minister?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Well, I would not say that the President is very supportive of the Prime Minister. I would say that the President is very mindful of his responsibility, particularly in times of crisis, but also in normal times, to ensure that the institutions of the state, the democratic institutions of the state, do function normally.

Liz Jackson: Two days later, we hear that new defence minister, Jose Ramos Horta, has headed south-west of Dili to meet with rebel soldiers and their supporters, who've rallied in the township of Gleno. As we arrive, Ramos Horta is telling the rally that he's asked for an international inquiry into who's behind the violence and killings between the warring security factions.

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Regarding the investigation, it will go ahead as planned, but I can't comment any further because it would be disrespectful to the international commission.

Liz Jackson: The people here have brought their banners and trucks because they're planning to demonstrate in Dili tomorrow, calling on the Prime Minister to resign. Ramos Horta tells them this is their democratic right.

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: I said, "It is your right to demonstrate. And...I do not necessarily...am going to say you should not or should not, that's not my responsibility."

Liz Jackson: Would you describe those people in Gleno as your supporters?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Well, it seemed like, it seemed like, as many of them said, I should be the Prime Minister... ah, yes, in many places. To drive, just now, I came from Maliana. Everywhere I have been to – Baucau, everywhere – and I have had tremendous sympathy, support, warmth from the people by the thousands, by the hundreds. And I feel overwhelmed, maybe because they are desperately looking for leadership, looking for people they can trust.

Liz Jackson: Major Tara, in the baseball cap, is the leader of this group. He's still officially in the Timorese army but deserted to the rebels after April 28th. We asked him why the Prime Minister should stand down now. Why not wait for elections?

Major Tara, F-FDTL (translation): There's too much evidence. We can't wait till the next election, because some members of Fretilin already have guns and they are threatening people so that people will vote for Alkatiri.

Liz Jackson: Later we're taken further into the hills to meet up with Lieutenant Salsinha – head of the group of so-called petitioners. He's supposed to have the evidence – documentary evidence – that the Prime Minister has given weapons to ministers of the Fretilin Party. This is a serious allegation – maybe, if true, enough to force Alkatiri to stand down.

Lt Gastao Salsinha, F-FDTL (translation): In the documents there are listed which district... how many weapons in every district. Who responsible for these weapon and who carry these weapon. All in document. Name included.

Liz Jackson: And these are civilians?

Lt Gastao Salsinha, F-FDTL (translation): Civilian and some of Fretilin militant.

Liz Jackson: But it turns out the documents are not available.

Lt Gastao Salsinha, F-FDTL (translation): At the moment I don't have, but...

Liz Jackson: It is possible for us to see them later?

Lt Gastao Salsinha, F-FDTL (translation): It's still not possible because these document... they keep not in this place. Somewhere else.

Liz Jackson: You keep them somewhere else. Is it possible for you to introduce us to the three civilians who have made the statements? Is it possible for us to talk with them?

Lt Gastao Salsinha, F-FDTL (translation): No. They are hiding somewhere.

Liz Jackson: The following day, a long convoy of trucks heads down from the hills and from the far-western border towns into the capital of Dili. They were stopped at the outskirts for 30 minutes or so, but after a few calls on the mobile phone Major Tara accepts the deal put to him by Jose Ramos Horta. The demonstrators can come into the capital, they can deliver their demands to President Xanana Gusmao himself and then leave but keep it under control. There's a little bit of rock-throwing but that's about it as the convoy slowly wends its way to the President's office. About 2,000 people have come to demand that Prime Minister Alkatiri stand down.

Liz Jackson: Do you think you've lost the support of the people?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: This country is not a country of 2,000 people. This country – a country of one million people. That's why 2,000... 2,000 is your number. My number is even much less than 2,000. I have put people counting one-by-one and it's... not more than 1,000 people.

Liz Jackson: You've had people counting one-by-one?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yeah.

Liz Jackson: And you put it at 1,000?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yeah.

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: The fact there is 2,000 or 1,000 – it's small for the scale of Dili and East Timor but it is true – the depth of dissatisfaction and criticism of the government as a whole and in particular the Prime Minister is much more widespread than the number of people demonstrating the other day – 1,000 or 2,000. It is widespread sentiment.

Liz Jackson: President Gusmao thanks the crowd for coming and reminding him of his responsibilities but makes no mention of their central demand that Alkatiri should stand down. He appeals for calm and promises he'll address the many crises that face the country.

Xanana Gusmao: I promise. After this crisis, people will no longer continue to suffer.

Liz Jackson: Does there come a point where unpopularity alone is a good enough reason for a Prime Minister to stand down?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Well, let me tell you one thing. No-one has asked me, personally, to step down. If I were to receive just 10 per cent of the criticisms that the Prime Minister has received – all kinds of invitations to step down – well, I would have stepped down long ago.

Liz Jackson: The following night we get a message. The group of men who claim they were given weapons on the orders of Alkatiri are ready to meet us. The meeting place is Liquica – an hour's drive west of Dili. Their leader, Commander Rai Los, is there when we arrive but before we talk we must wait for the rest of the group.

Man: He has to wait for the coming of other members so that we can report in full with the other members.

Liz Jackson: I understand. Thank you very much.

Liz Jackson: We'll wait till the other people arrive. They're travelling on bad roads from various locations – they could be some time. While we wait, we're given a document that purports to be a memo written to the then Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato – dated 20 May 2006. It's headed 'Fretilin Secret Security Team' and attached is a list of 30 names whom we're told are all the members of the team. There's a further list of the serial numbers of 16 weapons next to the names of the men who were given them. The memo says that Commander Rai Los was asked by Minister Lobato six weeks ago to recruit and arm a team of former resistance fighters because "the situation in the country has been threatened by an opposition party." It reports a claimed meeting on 8 May where Mari Alkatiri speaks with Commander Rai Los about how to settle the issues that have arisen between east and west. But nothing more specific than that. 90 minutes later we drive to a new location. The team is assembled and they've brought their guns. Commander Rai Los has put on a uniform as well. But he and his men are not soldiers – they're civilians.

Liz Jackson: Can we come inside and talk?

Commander Vincente da Conceicao, 'Rai Los', Fretilin Security Team: OK.

Liz Jackson: Once inside, Commander Rai Los made a series of allegations about the purpose of this team – some far more serious and sinister than in the document we'd read. He spoke about a 30-minute meeting with Mari Alkatiri.

Commander Vincente da Conceicao (translation): In this meeting he instructed Comrade Rogerio to distribute the weapons to the Fretilin Secret Security Team.

Liz Jackson: He alleged he was told the team's secret mission over the next 12 months was as follows...

Commander Vincente da Conceicao (translation): Firstly, to eliminate petitioners – totally destroy petitioners. Secondly, to terminate opposition leaders. Thirdly, to exterminate the military leaders like Major Alfredo, Major Tara, Major Tilman and their men who have taken weapons into the mountains. And finally to eliminate any Fretilin members who oppose the the policy of Mari and of Fretilin.

Liz Jackson: Rai Los says his team had used their weapons in a gun battle with the regular army – in the so-called Tibar incident. This is footage of his men in action. He says four people were killed, and this is why he decided to abandon his loyalty to Mari Alkatiri.

Commander Vincente da Conceicao (translation): Then I realised maybe I should be on the side of the petitioners against the FDTL. At that point, I realised Mari wanted to divide the people and keep control of the government.

Liz Jackson: Rai Los makes what seems an unlikely claim. But though he's now telling the rest of the world, he has not informed President Gusmao.

Commander Vincente da Conceicao (translation): We haven't informed the president. Mari ordered that.

Liz Jackson: When we asked how he could prove any of this, Rai Los put on an unexpected show. He lined up his men with their weapons – safety catches off – and then dialled what he said was former minister Lobato's mobile phone. Rai Los had told him the petitioners were around and now he gives his men the signal.

Gunfire

Commander Vincente da Conceicao (on phone): There's a lot of shooting. They just hit one of our men.

One of our soldiers. They're taking cover.

Man on phone: How many are there?

Commander Vincente da Conceicao, (on phone): There are too many brother.

Man on phone: OK, take cover and defend yourselves.

Commander Vincente da Conceicao, (on phone): OK, but brother, you need to contact comrade Mari.

Man on phone: I've contacted him already. You have to fire back and defend yourselves.

Commander Vincente da Conceicao, (on phone): OK, that's good.

Liz Jackson: We checked the mobile number the following day, and Rogerio Lobato did indeed answer the phone. Rai Los then produced more evidence. He'd saved the former minister's text messages as well. He showed us this one sent from Lobato's mobile phone, dated June 4th. That's two days before the anti-Alkatiri rally was headed for Dili. "To Rai Los. Opposition will come from Emera intending to demonstrate in Dili to put down the government. Why not stop them at the coffee plantation in Rai Laku and burn all 26 trucks?" Rai Los had no proof of his allegations against the Prime Minister. Just one text message from Alkatiri's mobile, date – June 1. All it said was, "Where are you going?"

Liz Jackson: Are you aware of a group called the Fretilin Secret Security Team?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: This is wrong, there is no Fretilin Secret Security for sure.

Liz Jackson: Are you aware of that title?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yes, one of the rumours, yes.

Liz Jackson: One of the rumours?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yeah.

Liz Jackson: We met a group of 30 armed men last night who said they were the Fretilin Secret Security Team.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yeah?

Liz Jackson: And they also said they were recruited and armed by your former interior minister, Rogerio Lobato, under your orders.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yeah, no, no, they... you, you will even really identify others. 30, or 50, or 60, and tried to... to, the groups who tried to accuse, ah, the former minister or also current ministers or myself, but this doesn't mean that there is not a manipulation of others. I do believe that there is no civil... not regular armed peoples that were armed by the government.

Liz Jackson: The Prime Minster agreed that he did have a meeting with Commander Rai Los – Rai Los is a fellow member of the Fretilin Party – but Alkatiri says all the allegations that Rai Los makes are false.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: People are now looking to really, to demonise my image. This is the only thing I can say.

Liz Jackson: Where do you imagine they got their guns from?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Please, it's better to ask them.

Liz Jackson: Well, I did ask them...

Dr Mari Alkatiri: I, I never... I never...

Liz Jackson: ...and they said it was from you.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: I never had one guns in my hands. I am not police, I am not armed force – I am Prime Minister.

Liz Jackson: The following day, we called at Rogerio Lobato's house.

Liz Jackson: Good morning.

Man: Good morning.

Liz Jackson: My name is Liz Jackson, from Australian television

Man: You want to Mr...

Liz Jackson: Yeah, Mr Rogerio Lobato.

Man: Mr to talk for TV come?

Liz Jackson: Yes, please.

Man: OK, wait.

Liz Jackson: Thank you.

Liz Jackson: We wanted to ask the former minister some questions, and he was no longer answering his mobile phone.

Man: Sorry, Mr Rogerio, call to phone for – he come? No. Mr Rogerio, no.

Liz Jackson: He's not here, or he doesn't want to speak to us?

Man: No, no. He not, no maybe sleeping.

Liz Jackson: He's sleeping?

Man: Yeah.

Liz Jackson: Oh, we're, we're happy to wait, we'll just wait then.

Man: No, no, I talk Mr Rogerio, Mr Rogerio no talk.

Liz Jackson: What, you spoke with him?

Man: Yeah.

Liz Jackson: So, he's not asleep?

Liz Jackson: We're not getting anywhere, so decide instead to call the head of the Board of Police, Antonio de Cruz. According to the document we got from Rai Los, he was actually the person who gave him the guns, at 10pm at night in a cemetery at Lauhata. We track him down in the border town of Maliana.

Antonio da Cruz: This is Antonio da Cruz speaking.

Liz Jackson: This is Antonio da Cruz speaking? Good morning, sir.

Antonio da Cruz: Good morning, madam!

Liz Jackson: Good morning.

Antonio da Cruz: How are you?

Liz Jackson: I am very good. My name is Liz Jackson from ABC TV.

Antonio da Cruz: Oh, ABC TV, yes! I am the National Commander of the Border Patrol Unit.

Liz Jackson: Good to speak with you, sir. Commander Rai Los says that on the 8th of May, you were at the Lauhata cemetery, near Liquica, and that you gave him 10 AK weapons, and 6,000 rounds of ammunition.

Antonio da Cruz: Ah, yes, ah, you, you already confirmed this information from who?

Liz Jackson: Commander Rai Los.

Antonio da Cruz: Yes.

Liz Jackson: And it's true?

Antonio da Cruz: Yes, it's true.

Liz Jackson: It's true.

Liz Jackson: Who told you to give those guns and ammunition to Commander Rai Los?

Antonio da Cruz: This is from, from, our... I'm receiving an order from the our Interior Minister.

Liz Jackson: Rogerio Lobato, the Interior Minister, told you to give, told you to give Commander Rai Los the guns and the ammunition, yes?

Antonio da Cruz: Yes.

Liz Jackson: Do you know for what purpose?

Antonio da Cruz: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know exactly what, what kind is, he is thinking about that, but I'm the one of the member of the police in Timor-Leste, and I'm the responsibility for the Border Patrol Unit and refer the order to the question our long guns to the... this matter directly to the our minister and our minister say that he has to give this for the Commander Rai Los and I am just doing...

Liz Jackson: Just following orders?

Antonio da Cruz: Yes.

Liz Jackson: Do you know if the Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri gave those orders to the Interior Minster, do you know if Mari Alkatiri knew that you were giving weapons to Commander Rai Los.

Antonio da Cruz: Ah, I'm not sure and I'm never listened together with the our Prime Minister, 'cause I'm the... just member for the national police.

Liz Jackson: Rogerio Lobato's security guard has appeared, so it's time to wind up. But Antonio da Cruz tells us he'll fax us the dispatch records he prepared that list the serial numbers of all the weapons, and to whom they were sent. Two pages arrive. The first page shows 15 HK33 weapons dispatched to His Excellency, the Minister of the Interior on the 8th of May, 2006. The second, a further eight guns dispatched to the minister on the 21st of May. We check the serial numbers of this list of weapons against the serial numbers we got from Rai Los. 15 out of the 16 of Rai Los's guns are listed here. The two we filmed in Liquica were in the first dispatch. We put this to Jose Ramos Horta.

Liz Jackson: What does it suggest to you that the head of the border police is asked to give weapons to the Minster of the Interior which end up in an armed civilian group?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Well, obviously, that is an... a very grave, ah, breach, a very grave offence. It would be understandable if the Interior Minister order the weapons away from a sensitive area to be locked away. But when the weapons are returned to him and, ah, re-assign them to, ah, civilians, that is an absolutely grave matter. I'm not saying that this is a fact but if this is what happened, is a very grave matter.

Liz Jackson: Arming civilians is a serious offence, yes?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Of course. I'm aware myself.

Liz Jackson: A sacking offence?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Mmm. Arming a civilian is against the whole policy of this government.

Liz Jackson: And it would be a sacking offence?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: Yeah.

Liz Jackson: The Prime Minister has already told us that he believes no civilians were armed by his government but just as we're leaving, we get information that suggests this isn't true. We've driven up into the hills behind Dili to Police Commissioner Paulo Martins' house. After the attacks on police, it was no longer safe for him in Dili, and here he has armed protection. We want to show the Commissioner a handwritten letter that we believe he wrote to the Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, dated 19 May.

Liz Jackson: Sir, we have come to see you because we want to be absolutely sure that this is the letter... you wrote to the Prime Minister.

Paulo Martins: Yes.

Liz Jackson: The letter informs the Prime Minister of an urgent matter, that on 8 May, the Commissioner of Police for Suai saw a person by the name of Arakat, and eight of his colleagues, with HK33 weapons that belonged to the border police. Arakat is a senior member of Commander Rai Los' group.

Liz Jackson: So in your letter to the Prime Minister, you told him that the weapons had gone to a member of Commander Rai Los' group?

Paulo Martins: I told this letter is a... a members of the name Arakat.

Liz Jackson: Arakat?

Paulo Martins: Arakat.

Liz Jackson: A member of Commander Rai Los' group?

Paulo Martins: Yeah.

Liz Jackson: The letter goes on to state that Arakat's weapons were, "the 17 weapons that had been handed over to the Minister of the Interior". It concludes, "If this was done with the knowledge of Your Excellency, I will not do anything to the contrary. But the population is panicking, and if these measures continue, there will not be a way to put an end to the current problems." Paulo Martins did not give the letter directly to the Prime Minister in person.

Paulo Martins: No, I give to through the secretary of the Prime Minister, Dr Guterres.

Liz Jackson: And what did you say to Dr Guterres about this letter?

Paulo Martins: I tell him that the letter is very top secret and he will have to deliver the letter when the Prime Minister stay alone.

Liz Jackson: When he's by himself?

Paulo Martins: Yes, yes.

Liz Jackson: Three days later, the Commissioner of Police asked to see Mari Alkatiri.

Paulo Martins: Ah, on 21 May, in the morning, I called the Prime Minister that I have a meeting with the Minister of Interior. And after that meeting, I will, um... if I have possibility to have a meeting with the Prime Minister. But the Prime Minister tell me that, "You can come to see me, but don't speak about the weapon."

Liz Jackson: He directly asked you not to talk to him about these weapons that you'd drawn his attention to?

Paulo Martins: Yes.

Liz Jackson: So as far as you know, nothing was ever done after you sent the letter?

Paulo Martins: Yes.

Liz Jackson: The Prime Minister definitely knew?

Paulo Martins: Yes.

Liz Jackson: If the Prime Minister had just an awareness that a group of people were being armed, Fretilin group of people were being armed, to ensure security, is that serious?

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Of course, that alone is serious. You know, we have enough police in this country. Now why having, you know, thousands of police that have more weapons than the army and we still need to arm civilians? And, this is just mind-boggling. I just don't understand why, ah... if these were the fact, why he would condone it why, being who he is – Prime Minister but a very legal-minded person – he would not stop it right away.

Liz Jackson: We went back to the Prime Minister, seeking his response to these further allegations, but we've had no reply. We can only assume he'll give the same response as before, that all the allegations about him are just slurs by his political rivals both inside and outside the Cabinet room.

Dr Mari Alkatiri: The situation here in this country now is a very complex one... as you know.

Liz Jackson: And will you be investigating your former interior minister?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: They... I'm open for... I told already today the international community, the United Nations to come and to investigate... everything.

Liz Jackson: If it were true, would you stand down?

Dr Mari Alkatiri: This is always your target this, how... stand down or step down or not. I've made it clear that I will never step down.

Dr Jose Ramos Horta: Even if I feel in my conscience that I am innocent, even if or... in my conscience as well, you know, these allegations are not all 100 per cent true but are 10 per cent true, I would have stepped down, you know? My own honour, my own dignity, my own pride would not, keep me, you know, in office.

Liz Jackson: While the political games and the power plays continue, those with no power have just modest demands. Beatrice de Jesus lost her husband Santiago in the slaughter of the unarmed police on the road to the UN compound. She wants to know who was responsible. Who ordered the troops, or were they civilians, to open fire? She's hoping for justice, but just a sign that someone cared would help.

Beatrice Do Rego de Jesus: (translation): No-one has come to see us about his death. Since his death, no-one from his force came to see us. Not even his commanders have come. We called to ask them if we can have his body back, but we've been told that we cannot remove his body until further notice.

Missing guns key to crisis

Melbourne Age - June 18, 2006

Tom Hyland – Despite a publicised handover of a handful of weapons by rebel soldiers, mystery over the whereabouts of thousands of police guns is delaying efforts to resolve East Timor's security and political crisis.

Australian peacekeepers have yet to do an audit of the 4000 police firearms, many of which are believed to have been given to civilian militants allied to factions in the ruling Fretilin party.

The Sunday Age believes that Australian forces have accounted for most of the weapons held by the army. A rebel force led by Major Alfredo Reinado handed over a further 16 firearms to Australian peacekeepers on Friday.

While that handover was reported as a breakthrough, key issues over the massive police armoury created by controversial former interior minister Rogerio Lobato remain unresolved.

Human rights groups in Dili say thousands of people in makeshift refugee camps are reluctant to go home until they are confident police guns have been taken from militants armed by Mr Lobato, who controlled the police until he resigned last month.

An Australian-supervised audit of the police armoury, which includes automatic weapons normally used by military forces, has yet to begin. An Australian Defence Force spokesman refused to say how many police weapons had been recovered since Australian troops arrived in East Timor three weeks ago.

He said more than 1000 firearms had been handed in or confiscated, but was unable to say whether these were police or army weapons. Nor was he able to say how many weapons were unaccounted for.

Australian forces have done a stocktake of army weapons. It is being checked against an official inventory. While the ADF spokesman would not say what the stocktake had found, The Sunday Age believes most army weapons are now accounted for.

An audit of the police armoury had not begun, as the ADF had not received a full official inventory, the spokesman said. But The Sunday Age has obtained a detailed breakdown of that inventory. Before last month's crisis in which the police command disintegrated, the 3000-strong force had: 3500 Glock pistols; 88 FNC assault rifles; 180 Steyr assault rifles; 200 Heckler and Koch assault rifles; about 20 F2000 submachine-guns; and about 40 shotguns. The ADF spokesman would not comment on reports that at least half that armoury was missing.

The commander of Australian forces in East Timor, Brigadier Mick Slater, concedes some weapons will never be recovered. "There are so many weapons in this country," he told reporters on Friday. "I don't think that in my lifetime we will get all of the guns handed in. There will be guns hidden in the hills for many, many years to come."

Tracing army weapons was relatively easy. While army guns were given to civilians at the height of the security crisis, this was done in a controlled manner and most had been returned. The army also had detailed documentation on its armoury.

Tracing police weapons is more difficult. There is no single inventory and firearms had been given to groups of civilians over a longer time by Mr Lobato in a tactic to intimidate opponents and create a counter-force to the army, which remains loyal to President Xanana Gusmao.

"There have been credible reports that a number of (police) weapons have gone missing in recent times and before that," said Bob Lowry, a former Australian army officer and former national security adviser to East Timor's Government.

"There's no doubt that Lobato has been behind that. He's the guy that ordered them and they've been imported and allegedly many of them have disappeared."

East Timor's Foreign and Defence Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, said police weapons – not the army – remained the real security challengenge. He told the Jakarta Post that army command remained intact, despite divisions in the ranks. The police, on the other hand, had been "very factionalised with too many weapons", Mr Ramos Horta said.

Despite the gradual restoration of order in Dili, the weapons issue was causing fear among internally displaced people (IDPs), human rights activist Aniceto das Neves said.

"This is the issue in Dili and in the districts. People in government, in the ruling party, were delivering weapons to Fretilin members," he said. "Rumours about civilians getting guns make the people very afraid."

An informed source who asked not to be identified said the security crisis and political impasse would not be resolved until people were given the facts about weapons.

"It's all about the weapons. If you want to know the truth about the so-called death squads (allegedly set up by Mr Lobato), you need to trace the weapons," the source said.

"The IDPs aren't stupid. They're not moving until they know where the guns are. And the impasse between the politicians, it's largely tied up with who did what, with what weapons. My suspicion is we're not being told any facts, because on the police side the facts may be unhappy."

B& East Timor's two most revered leaders left yesterday for a quick summit on its security crisis with giant neighbour Indonesia. President Gusmao and Foreign Minister Ramos Horta flew to Bali for a meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. They are due back today.

Long way to go to recover weapons in Timor

Sydney Morning Herald - June 19, 2006

Hamish McDonald, Dili – New details have emerged about an East Timorese Government minister's efforts to turn police into a private army for the ruling Fretilin party and arm civilian hit squads to cow voters and rivals before next year's elections.

The former interior minister, Rogerio Lobato, arranged to secretly import high-powered weapons for the East Timor National Police, who are responsible to the Interior Ministry, on a visit to Kuwait with the Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, about two years ago, the Herald has been told. "These were not police weapons. This was serious military hardware," a well-placed source said.

The Herald has also been given a copy of an invoice showing Mr Lobato imported a massive quantity of ammunition for assault rifles at the end of 2004. A group of about 30 men in the coastal town of Liquica have displayed about 20 automatic assault rifles of the sort held by police, claiming they were supplied the weapons by Mr Lobato and Mr Alkatiri to intimidate and kill Fretilin's political rivals.

In a move that might lead to Mr Alkatiri's dismissal under constitutional emergency powers, the President, Xanana Gusmao, is sending a key ally, the Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, to Liquica today to meet Reilos Vicente, the leader of the armed group.

Mr Ramos Horta said yesterday evidence of arms distribution – "that might breach the very principles enshrined in our constitution" – could induce the President to open an inquiry against ministers.

"What is important is, we try to collect the weapons, disarming people who are carrying them through dialogue, then we move to the next step, find out who gave weapons to them," Mr Ramos Horta said.

If Mr Alkatiri is cited, this would almost certainly force him to resign or step aside from his office.

East Timor observers believe Mr Lobato was preparing a show of force to intimidate voters in April's parliamentary elections, against a background of disappointment with the Government's failure to deliver the prosperity many expected after independence. Mr Lobato was dismissed three weeks ago at the height of the country's security crisis but remains powerful as Fretilin's deputy party chief.

The ammunition order shown to the Herald will firm suspicions that Mr Lobato was trying to build the 3500-member police force as a counter to the 1800-member army. The army was built on the guerilla force Falintil, which fought the Indonesians and which Mr Gusmao, its former leader, detached from Fretilin.

The invoice, made in December 2004, shows Mr Lobato approved the $US107,940 purchase of 257,000 rounds of 5.56mm assault rifle ammunition from Cavalo Bravo, a company owned and run by Bader Alkatiri, a brother of the Prime Minister. A certificate of registration for Cavalo Bravo shows it was set up to import military and police equipment, including heavy and light arms, munitions, grenades, tanks, helicopters, boats and supplies. Bader Alkatiri said Cavalo Bravo was not a monopoly, but mainly focused on military supplies. "But I didn't import weapons, only ammunition," he said.

Mr Lobato's efforts to build police firepower started as the former United Nations interim administration handed over to the Fretilin government at independence in May 2002.

Filipe Sousa-Santos, then representing a Danish trading firm, was involved in a UN-authorised importation of a small number of automatic weapons from the Belgian arms manufacturer FN Herstal. The order comprised 129 portable light machine-guns for the army, plus 64 FNC assault rifles and seven F-2000 automatic rifles for the police.

The police imported 3500 to 4000 Glock pistols as sidearms, and were given 200 Steyr automatic rifles by Malaysia.

It was the F-2000 guns that raised eyebrows. The most powerful weapon of its size, it has a high rate of fire and good accuracy. "This is what you would want to have if you were going to give the army a go," Mr Sousa-Santos said.

The order was vetted by Australian and American intelligence agents, and queried by Belgium, but allowed when the police said the weapons would be used to patrol the then tense Indonesian border, a police responsibility.

"Then FN Herstal started to see the weapons were not being used for what they were supposed to," Mr Sousa-Santos said. "People started to see them in the hands of ministerial bodyguards and the rapid reaction police unit."

Other reports say the police gained 20 of the F-2000s, but Mr Sousa-Santos believes these could only have come second-hand from other governments, as his firm retained exclusive rights with FN Herstal.

An Australian Federal Police official said yesterday 509 firearms had been collected from civilians since peacekeepers began arriving on May 25, but it was not clear how many more there were.

Dili protest calls for Alkatiri to go

Australian Associated Press - June 6, 2006

Up to 2,000 protesters paraded through Dili in a convoy of trucks and motorcycles to call for the dismissal of East Timor's prime minister Mari Alkatiri and his government.

Allowed into Dili after striking a deal with Malaysian and Australian peacekeepers, protesters punched their fists in the air and chanted "bring down Alkatiri" as their trucks lumbered through the capital.

Draped in banners, the convoy of more than 40 trucks converged on government offices to demand the resignation of the unpopular prime minister, as crowds lining the streets waved their support.

The protesters, escorted and watched by peacekeepers, also chanted their support for President Xanana Gusmao, who addressed the crowd outside his office in suburban Dili.

Standing on a car, and guarded by Australian and Malaysian soldiers in the crowd around him, Gusmao told protesters his priority was to see peace return to East Timor.

He appealed to rival gangs of youths from eastern and western parts of the nation to help end the violence that has rocked Dili in recent weeks.

"Let me bring peace to East Timor and then we will resolve others matters," said Gusmao, as an Australian Black Hawk helicopter circled overhead, and armoured personnel carriers stood guard nearby. "I do not want to see any more houses burned. No more burning, no more killing."

There were reports that groups of easterners threw rocks at the convoy, but Tuesday's demonstration was largely peaceful. The protest was a blow to the embattled Alkatiri, who last week claimed he could muster the backing of thousands of supporters.

Earlier the convoy was halted on Dili's outskirts by peacekeepers who had warned they would prevent any violence. After negotiating for about an hour, the convoy was allowed to proceed into Dili, on the condition protesters parade their banners and then leave the city again.

"Viva Timor-Leste", "Viva Xanana" and "Hatun (sack) Alkatiri", they chanted. Some shouted: "Viva Australia." The protesters issued a communique calling for the suspension of parliament and the dismissal of Alkatiri, accusing him of responsibility for the murder of East Timorese.

"We want to exercise our democratic right as a group to go into the city and bring down the government," a protest spokesman said as he negotiated with Malaysian officers.

Later, protest leader Major Augusto Tara met Gusmao to present the group's demands.

Australian military officer Lieutenant Colonel Mick Mumford said he had been warned of the approaching convoy. "My job is to make sure it is not violent," he said earlier.

"We will not be stopping someone from exercising their democratic right to protest. However, we will be stopping them from any sort of violent protest and we are certainly postured to be able to do that if necessary.

"We will be making sure there aren't any weapons brought into Dili." Earlier in the day, hundreds of young men looted a warehouse near the centre of Dili, running off with agricultural machinery, bags of grain, sheet metal and fertiliser.

Several plumes of smoke rose from buildings set on fire by rampaging gangs.

The wave of unrest in recent weeks is the worst since East Timor's bloody break for independence from Indonesian rule in 1999, when retaliatory militia groups devastated much of the territory.

Elections are scheduled for next year, but many East Timorese blame Alkatiri for the turmoil.

Alkatiri oversaw the dismissal in March of 600 striking soldiers, who clashed with loyalist troops and fled to the hills, opening the way for rival gangs from the nation's east and west to take to the streets.

East Timor prime minister vows to stay on

Asia Times - June 6, 2006

Maryann Keady, Dili – East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri says that he is a marked man and vows to not leave his government post without a fight. As violent civil unrest in East Timor continues and an Australian-led intervention force digs in, Asia's youngest country's political future is very much in doubt.

There are widespread conspiracy theories surrounding the escalating violence. In an exclusive interview with Asia Times Online, Alkatiri said the recent outbreak of violence first started by a group of 500-600 disgruntled military officials represented a "coup" attempt on his government and was allegedly orchestrated by undisclosed "inside and outside" forces.

Alkatiri declined to identify who he believed was behind the unrest, saying that he would need to look at the "complete picture" to "establish the facts" before making an official announcement. "Nobody will force me to resign through violent means," said Alkatiri in an interview from his home in Dili. "We won the election, my party won the election and we will win the next one in 2007."

In a speech Alkatiri made at a public concert last month, he claimed that "foreigners were coming to control and divide Timor again" with "foreign advisers meeting with politicians and going to the hills" to meet rebels. He also said that local politicians and foreigners were vying to undermine his Fretlin political party, and accused the Australian media of spreading false rumors that his days as prime minister were numbered.

Such implications have always been directed towards Australia, and by association, the US. For instance, when US officials started meeting with the Timorese judiciary in 2003, Alkatiri accused Washington of interfering in the country's internal affairs. Privately, a senior Alkatiri official referring to the US said last month, "they tried the church protests, and now they are trying to oust him via Fretlin. It won't work. They don't understand this country".

There is no direct evidence of Australian or US involvement in the recent violence that has destabilized East Timor. But Dili- based rumors – which Alkatiri strongly denies – are rife that both countries have urged Alkatiri to step down for the sake of national unity. Australian Prime Minister John Howard has publicly commented on what he referred to as "significant governance problems" with Alkatiri's administration. The US, notably, has remained mute on the deteriorating security situation.

This correspondent learned that a UN representative in Dili recently "unofficially" went to Alkatiri's offices to ask him to resign, which would appear to fall outside of the UN's remit of apolitical humanitarian assistance.

But Alkatiri denies there's been any external pressure. "There is no pressure for me to resign internationally," Alkatiri said, adding, "Not one international government or representative has asked me to resign. People must respect our national affairs."

Alkatiri has remained defiant against domestic calls for his resignation, saying a forced departure would be unconstitutional and undermine the country's young democracy.

Alkatiri also hinted he could go on the offensive if the violence persists, saying that he could call upon as many as 200,000 people to take to the streets within 48 hours, but maintained during the interview that "violence was not the way to solve problems".

In other media interviews, however, he has maintained that any attempt to oust him would lead to bloodshed; while his cabinet ministers have openly declared that other countries "want to raise another flag over this nation".

Foreign bogeys aside, what is clear is that both Australia and the US clearly favor Alkatiri's political rivals, namely President Xanana Gusmao and Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta. During the interview, Alkatiri played down media reports of disagreement with Gusmao, even though he has moved to block the president's bid to assume responsibility for security personnel.

There are growing indications that the two leaders' past differences are now at risk of becoming a full-blown political schism. Alkatiri also hosed down media reports that he was against the Australia-led intervention, saying that he welcomed the troops – and that he, the president and parliament had all invited them to stabilize the country. The assertion comes on top of media reports that Alkatiri had implicated Indonesia in the unrest, a claim Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has publicly rejected.

Crying coup

While Alkatiri cries coup, the embattled prime minister is acutely aware of East Timor's geo-strategic significance. Australia's recent Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the deployment of peacekeeping troops in East Timor reflect Canberra's carefully designed strategy to intervene in Pacific states only after they have descended into chaos.

In East Timor's case, a prophetic piece of writing emerged in 2002 from Canberra's Australian Strategic Policy Institute (a government-subsidized think tank). Entitled "New Neighbor, New Challenges", the paper set out the challenges for the Australia- East Timor relationship and put forward an endless number of scenarios of unrest in East Timor, which perhaps uncannily, all seem to have taken place since the report was published. Most interesting was its preoccupation with Australia ensuring security for East Timor – and Timor's importance for Australia's security.

The strategic subtext, of course, is that both Australia and the US have prioritized counterbalancing China's growing economic and military might in the politically volatile Pacific region. The Ombei Wetar Straits, just of East Timor's coast, is a particularly strategic waterway for the US navy, a deep water trough that connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans and is deep enough for submarines to navigate.

As China moves to enhance its maritime power, including US- alleged aspirations for the development of a "green water" navy, the US has countered by ensuring that potential maritime chokepoints don't fall under China's political sway. Washington has recently worked to forge together joint patrols of the Malacca Straits with regional allies, allegedly to guard against possible terrorist attacks, but clearly aimed at controlling the sea lanes where most of China's fuel from the Middle East is transported.

From Australia's perspective, China is becoming a disruptive force in a region Canberra has frequently described as an "arc of instability".

The island nation of Kiribati's recent decision to change its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China was viewed as a sign of Beijing's growing influence in the Pacific. The recent riots against the ethnic Chinese in the Solomon Islands gave rise to allegations China was causing instability in the region through covert migration policies.

Both East Timor and Papua New Guinea are closely watched for signs that they might be drawing closer to Beijing and jeopardizing Canberra's strategic interests. Both Canberra and Washington were reportedly alarmed to learn that Alkatiri had entered talks with China to possibly help develop natural gas pipelines off East Timor's coast.

The Greater Sunrise development, led by Australia's Woodside Petroleum, has notably stalled. Neither Australia nor East Timor has ratified the Certain Maritime Agreements in the Timor Sea agreement they negotiated after protracted disputes over maritime boundaries and Timor's request that a gas pipeline go to Timor, not Darwin, to liquefy the Sunrise gas. Alkatiri has argued that East Timor desperately needs the jobs, but although the treaty has been signed, it has not been ratified by either parliament.

Alkatiri's communist past as a self-professed Marxist while in exile in Mozambique is often dredged up among US and Australian diplomats as a reason he should not be trusted to assist their efforts to counterbalance China's influence in the region. Yet Alkatiri is a far more consummate politician than the Australian media caricatures often portray.

He is acutely aware that Australia's defense is predicated on maintaining a strong presence in the Pacific, including East Timor, which is clearly visible to China. Australia's recent forward deployment into East Timor reaffirms that strategic notion. Alkatiri himself has said that Timor is a small country between "two major players" and that therefore its own strategic options are limited. As the social unrest in East Timor grinds on, so too it appears are his personal options.

[Maryann Keady is a freelance radio journalist and reporter who has covered Timor and recently returned from Dili. She is currently at Columbia University's Weatherhead Institute looking at US Foreign Policy and China. Her first book of interviews called China Conversations will be out in 2007.]

The real power on the streets

Sydney Morning Herald - June 3, 2006

Tom Allard – Rosinha Erica Nunes is the kind of young woman that East Timor needs to cherish if it is to emerge as a viable country. A final-year high school student from a neighbourhood where few bother finishing their secondary education, she had the marks, and the ambition, to go to university next year.

But, like the fate of her nation, her health hangs precariously in the balance. "She was always laughing. We always had such good, funny conversations," says her mother, Rosalia Lotu, holding her daughter's hand in ward B at Dili's main hospital. "Now, there is only sadness."

Rosinha was mowed down by armed assailants in the Dili suburb of Perumnas last weekend. Fleeing the attackers, she was shot in the back. The operation to remove the bullets was not successful.

Fragments remain in her body, are causing her excruciating pain and there's the risk her wounds will become infected.

It was only hours after she was shot at Perumnas that Australia's military commander in East Timor, Brigadier Michael Slater, emerged to spruik a "good news story".

"Things are going very well," he said. "We have got just over 2000 troops on the ground and they are out there providing security, enabling people like those you see around you to start laughing and having a bit of a relax for the first time in several days."

To be fair to Slater, he was probably unaware of Rosinha's ordeal. But the contrast between his statement and Rosinha's agony highlights an enduring feature of the crisis.

While citizens of Dili cower in refugee camps and scrap for food and shelter, the military chiefs and, most of all, the country's political elite seem disconnected from the reality of the situation, and incapable of halting the mayhem.

Take the bizarre political machinations that unfolded this week. The violence first erupted in Dili in late April, when loyalist soldiers opened fire on a rally by some of their disaffected former comrades protesting at their ousting by the Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri.

Yet, it was only on Monday of this week that the country's Council of State convened for the first time. The talks continued for 21/2 days before the country's President and the hero of the independence movement, Xanana Gusmao, finally emerged to declare to the nation he had taken "sole responsibility" for East Timor's defence and security, including the Australian-led international force deployed to restore peace.

It seemed to be a circuit-breaker of sorts, at least until Alkatiri emerged the next morning to contradict the President and insist he remained in control, muttering darkly about unnamed forces attempting a coup d'etat. Slater, too, took issue with Gusmao – Australian troops would take orders only from him, he assured the media.

"The thing with East Timor's politics is no one says what they really mean. It's not a place of explicit understandings," one Western diplomat said this week. "This is a country dominated by personalities and their relationships are complex. The two biggest personalities are Gusmao and Alkatiri and that relationship is breaking down."

Many would argue that it is government itself that has broken down.

Underneath, the two main leaders are a coterie of ambitious politicians building their own personal fiefdoms and networks of influence, pulling in different directions.

Certainly, East Timor's Government is destined to remain unstable, at least until elections due next year, and that has worrying implications for its people, desperate for order and a modicum of economic development.

East Timor is poorer now than when the Indonesians left in 1999. More than half of the aid it received on gaining independence was spent on consultancy fees and salaries to foreign advisers, with few tangible results.

There is a lucrative stream of revenues to come from the nearby oil and gas fields, but that won't have an impact for several years.

East Timor also has one of the highest birthrates in the world, and unemployment rates approaching 50 per cent. And it is from the ranks of the jobless and destitute that the ethnic gangs draw their young recruits.

Some of the gangs are proxies for outside forces. The Australians don't know who these shadowy puppet-masters are, but believe they are getting closer to finding out. Elements of the security services and politicians are the likely culprits and, inevitably, there is speculation that Indonesian intelligence could be stoking the flames.

Perhaps the most alarming consequence of the crisis in East Timor is that the ethnic tensions between people from the eastern and western regions of the country, that have been beneath the surface for decades, have been so dramatically amplified, many fear permanently.

It is a development that seems to have been underestimated by Australia's military commanders. They point out that they have had success in stopping the factions of East Timor's security services from attacking each other, and have enticed 130 renegade police officers to surrender, hand in their weapons and return to barracks.

But, as this week so emphatically proved, the fury of these ethnic gangs – armed with homemade weapons, machetes that can be bought at any hardware store, a can of petrol and a lighter – can wreak enough havoc to paralyse Dili and leave 70,000 of its citizens in refugee camps, too afraid to return home.

Using spotters, mobile phones and primitive decoy techniques, the ethnic gangs have launched hit and run arson and machete attacks across Dili almost at will.

Contrary to the expectations of some, the mere presence of the Australian soldiers, their high-tech weapons, their armoured personnel carriers and their Black Hawk helicopters have done little to deter the gangs.

In many ways, it has emboldened them. With their restrictive rules of engagement, the Australian troops initially did not make arrests or confiscate weapons. That began to change as the week progressed, but controlling the hoodlums is police work, not a military operation.

The troops will arrive at the scene of the latest flare-up and disperse the mob, take some weapons and maybe arrest one or two people, usually letting them go a few hours later, having no facilities to detain them or criminal justice system to process them.

For those Dili residents who remain in their homes and aren't directly involved in the violence, the breakdown in law and order means they are arming themselves for protection, adding to the volatile mix.

Many are so terrified of retribution, they are unprepared to identify their attackers by name and only point in the general direction of their assailants. There's also a language barrier. Few Timorese speak English, and fewer of the foreign forces speak the main local language, Tetum.

A common refrain heard this week was: "Why aren't the Australians defending us?"

It is all very frustrating for the soldiers. "I am getting jack of this," one infantryman remarked, as he stood sentry waiting for another building to burn to the ground. So, too, are the people of East Timor.

Police led into jaws of death

The Australian - June 3, 2006

Mark Dodd – The column of unarmed East Timorese police had walked less than 100m when the shooting began.

Two soldiers stepped forward, one of them armed with an M-16 rifle. What happened next was random and mind-numbingly brutal.

One soldier pushed a UN policeman aside and raised his rifle to fire four quick bursts of rapid automatic fire into the group of 40 police.

Some started running immediately. Others were cowering. The smaller of the two soldiers sprayed four bursts from his M-16 to the left and to the right. His companion meanwhile fired methodical single shots with his M-4 carbine.

By the time they had finished, 12 policemen lay dead or dying and 20 more were injured.

"I think a couple (of police) had managed to run away. But in front of me was a pile of bodies. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life – it was just horrible," a UN policeman told The Weekend Australian.

"A few started to move and others, terribly wounded, tried to get up. We got them into the back of the trucks and took them to hospital. The dead we took to the morgue."

For the first time, The Weekend Australian can reveal the brutal truth about the massacre nine days ago that plunged East Timor towards civil war. We expose the fatal mistake of a UN official who led the police unprotected and on foot through army lines.

Yesterday, the site of the roadside massacre was marked with several small commemorative shrines – puddles of greasy, solidified candle wax and fragments of discarded clothing, including a dark-blue police beret.

It was the worst atrocity committed during weeks of ethnic unrest that have left at least 27 people dead, scores injured, more than 50,000 people displaced and reduced parts of the capital, Dili, to a smouldering ruin.

Sources with the Australian Federal Police say many of the deaths were caused by shots to the head.

On Thursday afternoon, a team of seven AFP investigators combed the crime scene with metal detectors, searching for clues and gathering evidence.

Within a few minutes they filled two plastic bags with empty cartridges – 5.56mm brass shell casings fired from two military weapons, an M-16 assault rifle and an M-4 carbine.

A senior UN civilian police officer, a witness to the slaughter, says UN incompetence was to blame. The officer blamed the senior UN police commander in Dili, Saif Malik from Pakistan, for the carnage.

"Tactically speaking it (the evacuation) was handled as poorly as possible. We (UN Civpol) made every mistake we could," said the officer, who asked not to be named.

By late morning on May 25, the Dili district police headquarters was under siege by the army, an attack many claim was payback for a deadly raid the previous night on the Tasi Tolu army barracks that killed popular officer Captain Kai Keri, allegedly shot by a police marksman.

During the assault on the police headquarters, soldiers used automatic weapons and grenades to blast their way inside.

Bullets ricocheted over parts of the city, some shells bouncing off a shed adjacent to the Dili Hotel, forcing lunchtime diners to scatter. It was a one-sided contest and the police surrendered in a treaty hastily arranged by the UN.

Of special concern was the need to safely evacuate about 40 police officers, many of whom were ethnic westerners, or Loromonu. Other UN police at the scene claim the evacuees were not all western-born and included several easterners (Lorosae).

To get to safety, the 40 unarmed police needed to cross through army lines and a deal was organised for safe passage. The police would march out of their compound flanked by a small group of UN civilian police, all walking in a group between a fleet of eight UN utilities.

According to the UN police officer, the decision for the group to walk out was taken by Malik. None of the UN vehicles was used to transport the police, nor was a police armoured personnel carrier parked at the headquarters.

After the shooting, the two soldiers ran back to their barracks.

The attack drove an ethnic wedge into East Timor's national police force, shattering any last vestiges of unity, at least for those based in Dili. President Xanana Gusmao, appalled at the murder, has promised those responsible will be brought to justice. The army officer wielding the M-16 has been identified, but his whereabouts is unknown.

The killings have served to deepen long-simmering distrust between the army and police. The 3000-strong army comprises majority Lorosae people, including many ex-Falintil pro- independence guerillas, while the 3500 police are mostly from the west, including former members of the Indonesian police – many veterans of the campaign to wipe out the guerillas. Old scores, it seems, are still being settled.

Timor cries out for leadership

The Advertiser (Adelaide) - June 3, 2006

Ian McPhedran, Dili – East Timor is a nasty little political jigsaw that will keep Australia guessing and engaged for decades to come. As rival gangs battled it out this week on the dusty back streets of the sweltering capital, former military officers sat stewing in the hills begging for dialogue and leadership, but refusing to lay down a single high-powered assault rifle.

Local police officers, armed to the teeth after just a few months formal training, stand by ready to react if ordered.

The big question on everyone's lips after President Xanana Gusmao declared a state of siege and assumed full security powers on Tuesday night was, "who is giving the orders" and just as importantly, "who is listening".

According to Mr Gusmao and the Australian military chief Brigadier Mick Slater the main man issuing the orders is the President in his capacity as Supreme Commander of the armed forces.

Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri says he is in charge as the political leader with the backing of his Fretilin party and the parliament.

The only way to test who is running the show will come after law and order is restored and upwards of 100,000 displaced people can return home. As of yesterday they were still voting with their feet and leaving Dili in droves.

It was 1975 and the pro-independence party Fretilin, and its members including Mr Alkatiri, Jose Ramos-Horta, Roque Rodrigues and Rogerio Lobato, squared up against the United Democratic Party which was closely aligned with Indonesia. The result was thousands dead and 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation.

It is almost impossible to gain a complete and accurate picture of the various groups and sub-factions, plots, conspiracies – real and imagined – or just plain nastiness actually operating here.

When asked by The Advertiser why his people hated each other so much, Foreign Affairs Minister Ramos-Horta denied it, but was unable to provide an adequate explanation for the violence.

He merely referred to "other elements" and not the ethnic gangs that are loosely constructed along an east versus west fault line, who go at each other every day throughout the city. The key elements of this major regional crisis are worth having a look at. There are about six in the mix including:

• The government (divided).
• The police (divided).
• The army (split).
• The Catholic Church (united but factionalised).
• Gangs (divided).
• War veterans (united).

You could add to the list the women and children of East Timor who conducted a loud protest in front of parliament on Thursday demanding peace and security.

"A competent government should not let people suffer and die and become refugees in their own homeland," shouted female activist Filomena Diaz into a powerful public address system that carried the message deep in the nation's political headquarters.

Her message would have a very strong champion in Canberra. Prime Minister John Howard helped East Timor gain independence and copped the flak from Indonesia. He encouraged Australian taxpayers and the international community to pay the bill and now he watches as Dili burns and refugees flee in scenes eerily reminiscent of September, 1999. This time the East Timorese have no one to blame but themselves and this time the political elites must be held accountable for what has happened.

East Timor was supposed to be a UN success story. Special envoy Ian Martin, who ran the 1999 operation, is in Dili with a large team putting together a new plan for a second UN mission to East Timor.

The main political players are President Gusmao, Prime Minister Alkatiri, Foreign Affairs Minister Mr Ramos-Horta, Interior minister Mr Lobato and Defence Minister Mr Rodriguez. President Gusmao, and most people, blame Prime Minister Alkatiri for allowing the situation to de-generate to such an extent.

Mr Alkatiri blames Mr Gusmao for insighting "mutinous" troops and have accused him of attempting to stage a coup d'etat. The most common allegation is that Mr Alkatiri has unleashed his private army and that is what is sustaining the street gangs.

The suspicion is that he was building this army to protect him at election time next May. Perhaps he has memories of the last time Fretilin ran the show and the country fractured just before the Indonesians arrived to quell dissent.

If push comes to shove they could mount an effective and costly (both lives and cash) guerrilla war for years just like the Falintil did against the Indonesians. Mr Gusmao is the man his people are turning to and foreign governments are relying on. The sole unifying figure took to the streets on Thursday in an emotional bid to reassure his people that he was in charge and that everything would be fine. That is a message they are not buying as violence continues, hunger grows and fear spreads.

Australian troops are confronted with a tirade of abuse from people who want them to take firmer action against the gangs. The time is fast approaching where firmer action will be required to gain some respect.

The longer the crisis goes on the worse it will become for the politicians, especially for Mr Gusmao and Mr Alkatiri, and for the international force.

So far no shots have been fired and troops have not been targeted. But as the frustrations of a hungry population grow and the Diggers are restricted by what are seen by the locals as "soft" rules of engagement (ROE), the hostility will increase. The Australian troops are determined to avoid firing the first shot almost at any cost.

"Once that shot is fired then everything changes," said a defence official.

Stand up, the real Mr. Alkatiri

Melbourne Age - June 1, 2006

Helen Hill – The Australian Government and media have demonised East Timor's PM without knowing all the facts,

Ever since the August 2001 elections for the Constituent Assembly in East Timor – when the longest-standing party of resistance, Fretilin, won a convincing 57 per cent of the vote against 14 other parties – I have observed among Australian embassy employees in Dili, and most Australian journalists who write about Timor, a readiness to criticise Mari Alkatiri, East Timor's Prime Minister, on grounds that show they barely know anything about him.

The Bulletin and The Australian regularly recommend his overthrow. The week before the Fretilin congress in Dili, the ABC joined them as regular Alkatiri critics. Jim Middleton on the ABC's evening news wondered "what would happen if Alkatiri decides to resist" calls for his resignation, and uncritically put to air claims from a sacked Fretilin central committee member alleging that 80 per cent of the central committee was against the Prime Minister.

A week later, after further violent episodes in Dili, we saw Maxine McKew on Lateline trying to put words into the mouths of MPs Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garrett: "Wouldn't you say there's not much support for Alkatiri?" How could they possibly know, if all they saw were the Australian media?

Who is Mari Alkatiri and why does he arouse such hostility from Australian politicians and media presenters? While Alkatiri was being told by Australians he should resign, he was also taking phone calls from the Portuguese and other prime ministers, wishing him well and urging him not to.

With Jose Ramos Horta, Alkatiri helped found Fretilin when, back in the early 1970s, it took the form of a clandestine group of young people meeting under the nose of the Portuguese colonialists in front of the building where he now has his office.

On the eve of the full-scale Indonesian invasion, Alkatiri, who had already graduated as a surveyor in Angola, was sent with Ramos Horta and Rogerio Lobato to put Timor's case at the United Nations. His exile lasted 24 years, but it was productively used; he studied law and economics at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, with South African exiles and others struggling for freedom.

Mozambique had offered scholarships to any Timorese students who could qualify for admission, and it was this group, who worked in many professions on graduating and gained a great deal of experience in economic development, who now form the backbone of the public service. In Mozambique, Alkatiri learnt a great deal about international organisations and how to avoid falling into some of the traps Mozambique had encountered.

His negotiating skills that the Australian Government finds so fearsome were gained during this period.

Every year he was with Ramos Horta at the UN General Assembly for the debate on East Timor. In 1998 it was Alkatiri who did most of the thinking that led the multi-party National Council for Timorese Resistance to adopt its "Magna Carta", linking Timor's future policies with the best standards in international practice coming from the UN's conferences on human rights, environment, population, women and social development during the 1990s.

Detractors frequently allege that Alkatiri's presence in Mozambique for 24 years means he is some sort of unreconstructed Marxist. In reality, he is an economic nationalist with a strong awareness of environmental issues and woman's issues; he regularly speaks out on violence against women. He has spoken against privatisation of electricity and managed to get a "single desk" pharmaceutical store, despite initial opposition from the World Bank.

He hopes a state-owned petroleum company assisted by China, Malaysia and Brazil will enable Timor to benefit more from its own oil and gas in addition to the revenue it will raise from the area shared with Australia.

At the Fretilin congress, he announced initiatives for scrapping school fees in primary school and introducing state-funded meals in all schools.

There is widespread support in Timor for Alkatiri's decision not to take loans from the World Bank, although it gave Timor a few years of extremely low salaries in the public service. The Cuban doctors invited by Alkatiri to serve in rural areas are also very popular, as is the new medical school they are establishing at the national university.

The young intellectuals at the university and the leadership of many Timorese non-government organisations praise Alkatiri's economic knowledge and his ability to defend Timor's interests against the likes of the World Bank and the Australian Government (over the Timor Sea issue), while being disappointed with slow progress on educational reform and development of the co- operative sector.

His major errors of judgement include a draconian defamation law, which has drawn the ire of much of Timor's media, and his tardiness in intervening on the sacking of the dissident soldiers, in which he has supported decisions made by army commander Taur Matan Ruak.

Another frequent accusation is that Alkatiri is "arrogant", and, while this might be the case, he has increased massively the public consultations held over the last year. Under East Timor's semi-presidential constitution, the president is popularly elected while ministers are appointed by the party with the majority in the Parliament. Alkatiri has sacked some ministers for poor performance, and some of them provided support for his challenger at the Fretilin congress.

In a rather bizarre twist, one of Alkatiri's unashamed supporters during this crisis has been the World Bank, whose director wrote last week that "Timor-Leste has achieved much thanks to the country's sensible leadership and sound decision-making which have helped put in place the building blocks for a stable peace and a growing economy".

[Helen Hill teaches sociology at Victoria University and is author of Stirrings of Nationalism in East Timor: Fretilin 1974- 78, Oxford Press.]

Australia continues campaign for 'regime change' in Timor

Darwin Indy Media - June 3, 2006

Peter Symonds – Just over a week after its first troops landed in East Timor, the Australian government is conducting an unrelenting and barely disguised campaign of "regime change" in Dili. Two senior East Timorese ministers resigned on Thursday as part of a compromise deal brokered in a tense, two-day meeting of the country's consultative Council of State.

Nevertheless, the drumbeat continues from Canberra and in the Australian media for "an end to the political crisis" – in other words, for Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri to step aside.

Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato and Defence Minister Roque Rodrigues were both close Alkatiri allies. Clearly angry at being forced to resign, Lobato told the media that the violence on the streets of Dili was being orchestrated. He refused to name names but told journalists to investigate. "You will easily find who is behind this," he said.

Asked if the unnamed forces included President Xanana Gusmao, Lobato did not respond directly but left no doubt as to his attitude. "Well you are saying that... I don't want to make accusations," he declared.

From the outset, the Australian-led military intervention has rested heavily on Gusmao and Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta. Following the Council of State meeting, Gusmao moved to sideline Alkatiri by declaring a "state of siege" and announced he would assume full control of the police and army. Alkatiri, who has refused to resign, insisted that he remained prime minister and therefore constitutionally shared responsibility for the security forces. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who is flying into Dili today, immediately backed Gusmao, saying that the president had "ultimate authority".

Alkatiri's position has been further undermined by the announcement that Horta will take over as defence minister, as well as retaining his post of foreign minister. Lobato's deputy Alcino Barris was initially slated to take over as interior minister. However, according to an Associated Press report, Horta is expected today to be sworn in to that post as well, concentrating considerable power in his hands.

"I'm the only one who might be able to heal the wounds within the armed forces, between the armed forces and the police force, between the armed forces and society at large," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Asked if Alkatiri should step down, he replied: "Well this is the opinion of many people across the nation that the prime minister should resign, however, we have to move one step at a time."

Despite Canberra's pretence of "neutrality", Australian Prime Minister John Howard immediately welcomed Horta's elevation. He described Horta as "a very credible figure" and hailed the change as signalling "a slow movement towards a resolution of some of the political process."

Canberra has made little secret that it regards Horta as a crucial ally and wants him to replace Alkatiri, who is more closely aligned to Portugal, Australia's chief rival for economic and strategic influence. At stake is at least $30 billion of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.

The mercenary motives behind the military occupation of East Timor are further underscored by the continuing looting, violence and arson, despite the presence of more than 2,000 Australian, New Zealand and Malaysian troops in Dili throughout the week. A string of media reports has now cited examples of Australian soldiers standing by while homes are burned and gangs of youth, armed with nothing more than knives and machetes, roam the streets.

An article today in New Zealand's Dominion Post reported that looters emptied a major government rice warehouse in Dili "under the nose of Australian forces". "People came with trucks at night and took away all the rice. There is no security. We came for rice this morning, and now there is none," local resident Agnes Noor said. The article noted: "It was the third time in a week the warehouse had been broken into while Australian troops were supposed to be guarding it."

The failure to act is not a question of incompetence or lack of legal power. There is no doubt that the Australian military is quite capable of efficiently guarding warehouses and suppressing poorly armed gangs of youth if ordered to do so. After all, Australian soldiers are part of the US-led occupation of Iraq and its ruthless repression of any armed resistance. SAS special forces work closely with the American military in Afghanistan in hunting down and killing opponents. But the first step taken by Australian troops in Dili this week was to disarm the local army and police and confine troops to barracks. As a result, gangs of alienated, unemployed youth have had free rein to wander and burn at will.

At the same time, the Australian military has not disarmed the rebel forces, which have clearly had a hand in whipping up ethnic conflict between "easterners" and "westerners". In fact, so- called rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado, a former exile in Australia and trainee at Canberra's national defence academy, has been accorded celebrity status. His every call for the sacking and indictment of Alkatiri is immediately reported in the Australian press. Yesterday Brigadier Mick Slater, head of the Australian force, landed by helicopter at Reinado's base for discussions. The unstated implication is that this highly dubious figure is regarded as a leader in waiting.

A deliberate policy

The inescapable conclusion is that the continuing scenes of chaos suit the political purposes of the Howard government and are being, if not actively encouraged, at least tacitly allowed to take place. Canberra is exploiting the mayhem as a political lever to tighten its grip over East Timor. By arguing that the half-island is a "failed state", it can intensify the pressure on Alkatiri to resign and push for the UN to sanction Australian control over key levers of state power.

The occupiers' last consideration is the plight of the East Timorese people. While hundreds of Australian troops, armoured vehicles, transport, attack helicopters and support personnel and supplies have been landed in Dili in a matter of days, there has been no comparable operation to provide desperately needed food and aid to the thousands of people now sheltering in refugee camps. Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, estimated yesterday that 100,000 people have been displaced-about 65,000 in 30 squalid encampments in Dili and a further 35,000 outside the capital.

The Australian government's cynical and calculated manipulation of the plight of the East Timorese parallels its operation in 1999, following the UN-sponsored referendum on independence. Having already decided on military intervention, Howard deliberately delayed sending the troops in, even though he was well aware-through detailed intelligence reports-that the Indonesian armed forces intended to unleash pro-Indonesian militia against independence supporters. Canberra then used the predicted scenes of carnage to stampede public opinion in Australia and around the world, and to pressure the UN into supporting the operation.

Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison told the ABC yesterday that in light of the continuing violence in Dili the government was considering the dispatch of a further contingent of Federal Police, on top of the 71 officers who have already been sent. Ellison is currently in New York for a meeting with the UN Head of Peacekeeping to discuss UN support for an ongoing Australian- led force in East Timor.

Ellison left no doubt as to the character of Canberra's plans, which are modelled on the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomons Islands (RAMSI). Asked if the East Timorese operation could "morph into something more of a RAMSI-style mission", he replied: "[T]hat's certainly the presentation that I'm making to the United Nations tomorrow, that the RAMSI template, if you like, is a very important way to go in nation building, and it demonstrates, I think, a format which can work in nation building."

The "RAMSI template" is nothing but a recipe for a long-term colonial-style occupation. While the Solomon Islands still has an elected government, nominally at least, all of the main levers of power, including the police, prisons, courts and finance, are in the hands of Australian officials installed to run the administration for at least a decade.

Just over a month before troops landed in East Timor, the Howard government sent 300 soldiers and police to the Solomon Islands to reinforce RAMSI, after rioting erupted following elections. The protests reflected deep hostility towards both RAMSI and the Australian government, as well as towards local politicians.

The Howard government's objective in East Timor is to establish Australian imperialism's unchallenged domination over the tiny statelet, against any claims by rival powers, particularly Portugal.

Within ruling circles, there remains a certain bitterness over the outcome of the 1999 intervention. While Australia provided the bulk of the troops, the argument runs, Portugal has been able to wield significant influence through Alkatiri and the ruling Fretilin party, threatening Australia's economic and strategic interests, especially its control over the Timor Sea oil and gas.

The Howard government is somewhat cautious about openly stating its aims, but the media, particularly Murdoch's Australian, has no such hesitation. In last Thursday's edition, foreign editor Greg Sheridan listed the central facts readers needed to know. At the top of the list, he bluntly declared Portugal to be "Australia's diplomatic enemy in East Timor". He berated Portuguese Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral for his criticisms of Howard, branding them as an attempt to prop up Alkatiri.

"The Portuguese see Alkatiri as the key to their influence. Without Alkatiri, East Timor never would have embraced its mad policy of deciding that Portuguese would be the national language. Alkatiri has been the author of every calamitous decision the East Timorese government has made, decisions that have led to it being, when Australia intervened militarily, a failed state," Sheridan wrote.

After denouncing Portugal's record as the colonial power in East Timor, he concluded his diatribe by declaring: "That it [Portugal] is now to send troops to East Timor to help stabilise the situation is not a welcome contribution but a sinister bid for influence that will once more reinforce Alkatiri." The obvious inference is that Alkatiri has to go and Portugal, including its 120 riot police, should keep out of Dili in order to ensure Canberra's exclusive domination.

The belligerence of Sheridan's comment, using language normally employed against enemies in times of war, is an expression of the criminal character of Australia's operation. Relying on the backing of the Bush administration, the Howard government, with unconditional support from the Labor Party and the entire political establishment, is recklessly embarking on a course of carving out a neo-colonial sphere of influence in the Asia Pacific region against its Asian and Europeans rivals. Its scope will not be limited to the Solomon Islands and East Timor.

An uncivil war

The Bulletin - June 2, 2006

Paul Toohey – Saturday morning, things went crazy. The Australians had landed but, apart from a group of some 30 commandos nursing SR-25 semi-automatic rifles who had taken position around the United Nations compound, they were nowhere to be seen.

Most of them were holed up at the airport, awaiting orders to move into town. The people of Dili, those who remained, formed groups. They held machetes, spears, sticks, swords, lengths of wood with long nails and slingshots that fired deadly iron darts. They wore long coats to protect themselves from being slashed. They were standing their ground, protecting themselves from marauders. Or were they the marauders? It became impossible to tell.

In the inner-city suburb of Villa Verde, a house belonging to a family from the east of the country was torched by Timorese from the country's west in a revenge attack for house burnings the day before. Women clutching statues of the Virgin Mary fled, screaming and crying in disbelief at the hate that had suddenly re-entered their lives.

A truckload of people trying to get out of the tight laneways became trapped. They were easterners. Or was that westerners? They were set upon, masked men smashing into the young men in the truck.

As the house burned and another caught fire, there was no question of a fire brigade. Or army intervention. Further to the west of town, in the so-called Delta suburbs – a series of little villages – terror struck just before midday. A house was torched and the panic contagion gripped again. The first company of Australian regulars to hit the city, numbering 70, were pointed to the action by desperate civilians.

The Australians headed for the foothills and separated two warring factions. The soldiers crossed a no-man's land and ordered the westerners to disperse. The group of easterners, held back by the Australians, watched in horrified frustration as the westerners, instead of disbanding, went straight back into the Delta village and set more houses alight. They howled as they watched the group stealing their belongings. They begged the army to intervene. The soldiers would not do it.

"This is no easy decision," said a soldier, watching houses catch alight. "There's no easy way out of it." It seemed they had orders to separate people, but not to disarm them or take any preventative action. An easterner began chanting: "Aussie no good, Aussie no good."

Next to me, a soldier collapsed on top of his rifle. His comrades slapped him back to life and removed his heavy camouflage gear. It was just the heat.

Moving back east into town, the scene turned spooky. Motorbikes burned on the roads; there were blockades everywhere. Driving past groups of men, you'd give them a cautious wave. They'd wave back and usher us through. It was clear white foreigners were not yet a target. Who were these people? Sometimes east, sometimes west, sometimes both. Shooting off to the right, house burning to the left. It was not quite civil war, but it was close.

What was once a petty argument about discrimination has turned the nation toxic. The story, in brief, goes like this: in March, 600 F-FDTL (army) soldiers – known as the petitioners, all of them from the west of the country – abandoned their barracks complaining they had been overlooked for promotions.

Easterners, who run East Timor's military as a reward for leading the 24-year insurgency against the Indonesians, made some stupid remarks about how westerners were Indonesian collaborators.

Early last week, Reinado came down to Dili, by arrangement, to meet political leaders to negotiate a truce. He was fired upon by F-FDTL soldiers. He lost three men and then returned to the hills. Then, on Thursday, things turned very nasty.

The Dili-based police, mostly western-born, were holed up in their barracks in the city, fearful of coming out. Word had got around that the government-loyal eastern troops, who were by then controlling Dili, were going to raid and massacre police. The United Nations intervened, negotiating for the police to lay down their arms and leave the barracks to walk several blocks to the UN compound. The UN had been given assurances by F-FDTL that the police would be allowed to surrender in peace.

As some 70 unarmed police wearing their body armour walked past, accompanied by unarmed UN guards, F-FDTL soldiers opened fire, murdering ten policemen and policewomen; they simply mowed them down. In the hospital ward the following day, the wounded police were lying around in terrible heat, mouths agape and glassy eyed, family members fanning their brows and nuns whispering prayers.

There was a horribly distressed Chinese-Sulawesi bloke with a bullet in his neck and arm – where did he fit into this? It turned out he was the owner of a little red truck we'd seen on a main road, riddled with bullets, blood everywhere. He'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Australian surgeon Dr David Hamilton said Dili hospital was coping well, although they wanted to get people to Australia. Over the previous days, he and his team and performed 24 operations. What he noticed about the wounds – different to what he'd seen in the Vietnam War and in Pakistan conflicts – was how much messier they were.

"Bullets used to be big and slow," he said. "These were smaller, higher-velocity bullets – they're much more destructive."

Hospital director Antonio Caleras begged us to pass a message to the Australians to come and protect the hospital. He said he'd received threats all through the night that soldiers were coming to finish off the police for good. The message was duly passed on, but it took another day and night before the Australians posted a guard.

By Friday, not a single policeman could be seen in Dili. They had fled to the hills, or were hiding in their homes. The F-FDTL appeared to be confined to their barracks, although to the east of town, in Taci Tolu, they were patrolling and had taken over a deserted barracks there.

The Bulletin met Lieutenant Colonel Aluk Joao Miranda, an easterner, in the barracks. I noticed my translator was looking very nervous and asked what was wrong. "I am worried," he said. "I know these soldiers; they are all from the east. They know I'm from the west ..."

As we talked to Aluk, the translator was heaving with fear. How could that be? Aluk was one of the heroes of the guerilla insurgency – and was, until a few weeks ago, a national hero. Now, he was tarred with the dirty reputation his army has suddenly and justifiably earned. Aluk said he was glad the Australians were here. He said he and his men had in the past days been fighting unreported battles, just to the west of Dili.

Aluk said one of his men had been killed while his men had killed four during the week. Who were they? "They are an unrecognised group," he said, confirming they were westerners.

Seeking the soldiers' protection was a large group of eastern- born police, now at war with the majority western-born police. I put it to Aluk that, sooner or later, he and his men would have to be disarmed by the Australians. "I say there is no fundamental reason to disarm F-FDTL," he said.

To get to President Xanana Gusmao's compound in Dare, in the hills above Dili, we passed through roadblocks manned by police and encountered heavily armed police all the way up. They now controlled these hills. They were protecting Gusmao, and themselves. This was weird – wasn't Gusmao the supreme commander of the military? Why was he now being guarded by both regular and rapid-response police?

It was because Gusmao had expressed his disgust at the army for shooting at unarmed police and petitioners. Now, having aggravated the army, the police have given Gusmao their undivided loyalty.

Rumours have been flying around that the president has cancer and is near death. We saw him and he looked fine – and we are reliably informed his problem is slipped discs and hernias.

Sitting in the president's compound was a small, unassuming man whom I failed to recognise at first: Paolo Martins, East Timor's commissioner of police. He said that of the 3000 police in East Timor, most were loyal to the west. Over the past few days, 700 had fled Dili and were now in position above the city, waiting, but fully prepared to fight the army if necessary. He said he was sickened that the army had ambushed and executed his men on Thursday.

He accused the F-FDTL of opening the armouries of their Bacau and Metinaro barracks, in the east, and distributing automatic weapons to civilians.

That, he said, accounted for the strange masked militia wandering Dili's backstreets, and in towns out of Dili. "I know they have done this; people saw them do it and I have evidence," said Martins.

He was scathing about the UN's failure to protect the policemen who were cut down on Thursday. "They were killed at the hands of the UN," he said.

Martins said it brought back memories of 1999, when the UN abandoned the country after the disastrous autonomy vote. The UN, whose few hundred staff have mostly evacuated apart from "essential" staff, carry no weapons. They were never able to offer the shot police any protection at all. Martins wants the UN, and the soldiers who fired on his men, dealt with as criminals.

By the weekend the battle had evolved into an ethnic clash between civilians. Martins said he feared: "Dili may never be safe again". In all of this, the government – led by Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri – claimed it still had a role to play, but the truth is that Alkatiri lost power late last week. There was, and is, no government.

Alkatiri just wouldn't admit it. John Howard all but called on Alkatiri to throw in the towel.

This cold little man said on Saturday afternoon that he would not resign; rather, the country could wait till the elections next year to decide the leadership. His arrogance was breathtaking.

He and Gusmao are openly hostile, the president calling Alkatiri "stupid" and accusing him of being a communist.

At midnight on Saturday, Gino Favaro, owner of the Hotel Dili and a man who has been in East Timor for all of the troubles of the past 30 years, took The Bulletin for a cruise through town. We had heard the Australians were fully positioned throughout the capital. It was not the case. We only saw four Australians on the streets – sitting concealed in grassy gutters near the F-FDTL compound. "I count more dogs than Australians," said Favaro. The city was utterly deserted.

By Sunday morning, things had changed. Australian soldiers were everywhere and the city was secure.

Or so they said. Major Reinado was meanwhile in Maubisse, to the south of the city. "What am I doing? We're relaxing, cleaning weapons, that's all, awaiting orders from my president," he said.

Reinado has become the figurehead for the west, as the Australians acknowledged on Saturday when 12 soldiers and a lieutenant colonel ("I forget his name," said Reinado) flew up to see him in Black Hawk helicopters. "We had a glass of wine," Reinado said. "We talked." The Australians left, seemingly content just to make contact. The group was not asked to surrender its weapons.

Reinado fully expects Gusmao will, any day now, exercise his right to dissolve the parliament and call for elections. He wants the leaders of the army – namely Brigadier Taur Matan Ruak and his chief-of staff, Lere Anan Timor – charged as criminals for being in charge while their soldiers fired at unarmed people.

He also wants Alkatiri sacked, but advised the prime minister to leave the country for his own safety. "He has to leave. The people are going to cut his head off. They do not like him. Mari is the new Hitler."

On Sunday morning, The Bulletin tried to speak to Alkatiri at his heavily guarded (by eastern-born police) home near the waterfront. He would not appear but sent Australian-trained lawyer Jose Teixeira – one of his closest advisers – out for a chat.

Asked who was in charge of this country, Teixeira said: "The prime minister, of course. Who do you think?" I told him no one was in charge. The place was lawless.

"There is no power vacuum in this country," he insisted. "There is a security vacuum. The Australians have been too slow to get on the ground; they are not handling this well." Then Teixeira spun a line. "There is no rift between the prime minister and the president.

They are in close touch and the prime minister is controlling this whole situation." In fact, Gusmao has seized control of all security forces, rendering Alkatiri powerless. They clearly hate each other.

Teixeira said there was no problem, really, just some unruly youths who needed to be brought into line. He said, after all, the power was on and water was running, wasn't it? Then he told us that the police had been disarmed. It was not true. We drove up the hills and saw many armed police, and confirmed that at least 1000 of them are armed and consider themselves loyal to Gusmao, Reinado and to the westerners in general.

Interior (or Police) Minister Rogerio Lobato has not been sighted in days. He no longer commands the police – his deputy, Alcino Barris, does. Barris is up in the hills with Paolo Martins.

In the suburb of Bairo Pite, around midday on Sunday, we watched some 100 people smashing cars.

Where were the Australians? Although there were said to be 1300 to 1400 Australians on the ground in Dili by then, we circled and circled the city and could see, at most, 100. Spot fires were breaking out across the city.

That morning, Aluk's men had left their barracks, come into town and hijacked an Australian-owned truck, stealing both the vehicle and its load. An Australian officer went alone to talk to Aluk, keeping a guard of Australians well away from any contact with the Timorese soldiers.

Something had gone seriously wrong with the Australian attempt to secure the city. As the commander of Operation Astute, Brigadier Michael Slater, stood in Dili airport claiming the city was under control and imploring the displaced persons who had gathered there to return home, groups were gathering up courage and burning and looting. It seemed they had got the idea that the Australians wouldn't shoot them. They were right.

Late on Sunday afternoon, parts of central Dili were in flames as westerners burned out shops and homes associated with the east. We asked a man what was going on. He delivered a quaint Timorese parable: "Before, the hen [easterners] was fucking the rooster. Now the rooster is fucking the hen."

As the crowd circled on a roundabout in the centre of the city, troops moved in – but stood back as they smashed buildings and set them alight. One Australian soldier lost it, unable to handle the apparent impotence of his unit: "This army's fucking bullshit," he yelled.

I asked another soldier if the rules of engagement said they could do nothing? "We could stop them," he said, "but it's unwise to. At the moment, they outnumber us." To their credit, they acted as peacemakers not aggressors.

Finally, a decision was made to start disarming and detaining the vandals. Two were put on the ground and cuffed with cable ties. Other arrests followed. They were led off, dwarfed by the giant Australians in khaki. They were children.

By Sunday night, it was westerner civilians – not Australian or Malaysian military – controlling Dili.

By Monday lunchtime, police in the hills were surrendering and being trucked by Australian troops to police headquarters. The Timorese army had left town after being ordered back to barracks in the country's east.

Earlier that morning, Gusmao, Alkatiri and the East Timor State Security Council gathered in the president's Dili office. Many saw it as an attempt by Gusmao to overthrow Alkatiri. At 2pm, Gusmao emerged, pushing aside journalists and demanding to speak to "the people". He told the gathering there was no solution and he promised that, whatever happened, he would fix his country's problems. As Gusmao went back into the building, he needed the support of his personal bodyguard, who almost carried him.

The meeting dragged on into stalemate, Alkatiri insisting the president had no power to dismiss him summarily. He was right.

Up in the hills, Sister Lourdes of the Brothers and Sisters in Christ, wept: "My baby country needed good parents. Mari Alkatiri doesn't have the heart to be a good father."

Ministers bow to pressure

Sydney Morning Herald - June 2, 2006

Lindsay Murdoch and Tom Allard, Dili – Two of East Timor's most powerful ministers resigned from the embattled government in Dili yesterday, risking a further escalation of violence if security forces loyal to Rogerio Lobato, former minister for the interior, take revenge for his forced exit.

Mr Lobato, who has built a strong personal security network, resigned with the defence minister, Roque Rodrigues, after intense pressure from the President, Xanana Gusmao.

The upheaval in the increasingly unstable and unpopular government came as Mr Gusmao emerged in public for only the second time since Dili was engulfed by bloodshed, urging the warring factions of the country's security services, and its ethnic groups, to forgive each other.

There was also looting at a food warehouse, more sporadic gang violence and increasing concerns over the risk of an outbreak of disease due to the poor sanitation in the camps that are housing about 70,000 refugees.

Mr Gusmao demanded the resignations to satisfy public outrage at the Government's mishandling of grievances by disgruntled soldiers which led to violent clashes in Dili. It took almost a week of intense negotiations to get the outcome he wanted.

Fighting back tears, Mr Lobato claimed that forces he was unwilling to name were behind weeks of violence that has brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Asked who he was referring to, Mr Lobato said journalists should investigate. "You will easily find who is behind this," he said. Asked whether "they" included Mr Gusmao, Mr Lobato replied: "Well, you are saying that... I don't want to make accusations." As the minister responsible for East Timor's police, Mr Lobato has been accused of provoking internal conflicts to enhance his power, a claim he rejected.

He will be replaced by the Vice-Interior Minister, Alcino Barris. Jose Ramos Horta will become interim defence minister while retaining his position as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Mr Gusmao addressed police officers and visited refugees sheltering at a United Nations compound. "This is a time when the country needs unity, not fighting," Mr Gusmao told the officers. "It is our duty to forgive each other and rebuild this nation that we all love, from the ashes." Mr Gusmao, who remains popular, was met with cheers and applause from the refugees and tears by some of the officer.

Dili desperately needs police back on the streets to make arrests as the mobs have consistently defied Australian forces. Dili's main food warehouse was looted overnight after being left unguarded by Australian forces, whose headquarters are less than 100 metres down the road.

Thousands lined up for food yesterday, but there were only 2000 sacks of rice left to distribute, with 60,000 sacks having already been handed out or stolen.

Religious missions said more people were streaming into their compounds after violence overnight, while UNICEF warned that sanitary conditions in many of the camps were dire and disease could break out at any time.

Rebel leader's ambush account not true, loyalists say

Sydney Morning Herald - June 2, 2006

Tom Allard in Dili and agencies – Soldiers loyal to the East Timorese Government say rebels led by Major Alfredo Reinado ambushed them as they approached his stronghold for peace talks, casting new light on last week's fierce gunfight captured by a television crew.

Speaking for the first time since they were ordered back to barracks, an army commander said his troops should be given credit for the discipline they had shown in staying away from Dili while gangs ran amok and the homes of soldiers, their supporters and families were torched.

The incident that triggered the recent wave of violence that has engulfed the capital occurred 10 days ago when loyalist soldiers and Major Reinado's forces clashed in the hills outside Dili.

The loyalists, who asked not to be named, as they spoke without authorisation from their leader, Brigadier-General Taur Matan Ruak, said four soldiers, led by a senior commander, approached Major Reinado's base looking to initiate peace talks, walking slowly and openly.

It was absurd to suggest they were there to launch an attack, they said, as there were so few of them and they were clearly vulnerable. "It was an ambush," one officer said.

Their account differs substantially from that of Major Reinado, who told SBS television's David O'Shea that the loyalists were "coming after us", were warned to fall back, refused, and were fired on.

Australia's military chief in East Timor, Brigadier Mick Slater, will try to meet Major Reinado today. "I intend to make my best effort to get to see him. If nothing else, I think I owe it to him," Brigadier Slater said. "I have been in communication with him through a number of people, and he has co-operated with us fully."

Justice & reconciliation

Commission finds gross rights abuses in Timor Leste

Jakarta Post - June 23, 2006

M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – The Commission for Truth and Friendship (KKP) has identified 14 incidents of gross human rights violations it says occurred in 1999 around the time the former province of East Timor voted to split from Indonesia.

Co-chairman of the commission, Timor Leste's Dionisio Babo Soares said the 14 cases included a clash between members of pro- Indonesian militia and pro-independence groups in Liquica, a murder at the house of Manuel Carascalao and a shooting incident near Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo's residence.

"All can be considered gross violations of human rights," Soares said after a meeting with the House of Representatives Commission I on foreign affairs and human rights.

Soares said the Commission for Truth and Friendship, jointly set up by Indonesia and Timor Leste, identified the cases after studying thousands of pages of reports and the proceedings of an ad hoc human rights tribunal set up in Indonesia.

"We have studied all the documents, including ones prepared by the National Commission for Human Rights and the 2500-page report produced by United Nations-sanctioned Serious Crimes Unit," Soares said.

Benjamin Mangkoedilaga, the commission co-chairman from Indonesia, said that to corroborate the reports, members of the commission had also collected evidence and interviewed victims in Liquica, Suai and several locations in Dili.

"We also plan to meet with a number of people who were implicated in the cases," Benjamin said.

Benjamin, however, declined to release the names of individuals believed to be behind the rights violations.

He only smiled when asked whether the commission also planned to question Gen. (ret) Wiranto, the chief of the Indonesian Military at the time of the violence.

The United Nations has estimated that at least 1,500 people were killed by militia groups backed by the Indonesian Military in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum, in which more than 90 percent of the East Timorese vote to split from Indonesia.

The commission, modeled on similar restorative justice bodies set up in South Africa, Chile and Argentina, has no powers to prosecute alleged human rights violators. However, it can give recommendations to the Indonesian and Timor Leste governments to grant amnesties to alleged perpetrators, and to compensate and rehabilitate victims.

Its 10-member panel is made up of a mixture of legal experts and human rights figures. Half are from this country and half from Timor Leste.

Human rights groups and the Catholic Church in East Timor have criticized the commission as a attempt to bury the past rather than pursue justice. The body was set up last year after the United Nation's expressed its dissatisfaction with Indonesia's earlier attempts to bring the perpetrators of rights violations to justice. At the time, it threatened to take the cases to an international tribunal.

Responding to the commission's findings, chairman of Commission I Theo L. Sambuaga called on the Indonesian Military and the Ministry of Defense to cooperate with the KKP.

"We will urge our partners, in this case, the TNI and the Ministry of Defense to support the work of this commission," Theo said.

Shadows of 1999 killings cloud East Timor

Financial Times - June 20, 2006

Shawn Donnan – To anyone who has followed East Timor's violent birth, the prefab trailer sitting just inside the entrance of the former United Nations compound known as "Crocodile Alley" is an uneasy reminder of the stalled judicial efforts that have followed.

Behind the black grating and heavy padlocks that protect its windows and doors sit filing cabinets holding thousands of hours of witness interviews, recovered documents, autopsy photos and other evidence built up over five years of work by UN prosecutors, officials say.

In the trailer sits the documentary evidence of almost 1,500 murders carried out by Indonesian soldiers and pro-Jakarta militias in the weeks surrounding an August 1999 vote for independence by the East Timorese.

Also there is the evidence that caused UN prosecutors in February 2003 to file indictments against senior Indonesian generals – all of whom remain free and untried – accusing them of orchestrating the campaign that led to those murders, the officials say.

Yet as the world's newest nation seeks its way out of another crisis with UN assistance – and turns to the body again to help it deal judicially with fresh atrocities – the trailer is also a reminder of how that unresolved legacy continues to shadow the East Timorese and may have contributed to the latest crisis, according to rights activists and diplomats.

The past few weeks have seen the army and police either split or disintegrate, machete-swinging ethnic gangs burn down homes, and looters go to work even as peacekeepers are deployed.

"I'm sure some of the people who [have been] looting and burning houses are thinking, 'If nothing can be done about the crimes of 1999 what can they do against me?' " says Joaquim Fonseca, one of East Timor's leading human rights activists.

The link has come to life most prominently through the launch of UN-backed investigations into recent atrocities, as rights groups such as Amnesty International warn that the UN needs to deliver a better result than it did for the 1999 crimes, or contribute to a cycle of impunity.

"Resolute action is now crucially required on the part of concerned parties to ensure that all perpetrators of serious crimes in [East Timor] - both present and past – are brought to justice," Amnesty said last week.

Among the recent incidents being examined is the May 25 massacre by Timorese soldiers of 10 unarmed local policemen who had been persuaded to lay down their weapons by UN police advisers trying to negotiate an end to a siege of East Timor's national police headquarters, which sits next to Crocodile Alley.

At the height of the recent violence looters also attacked the former UN complex, which now houses the offices of East Timor's prosecutor-general, and broke into the trailer holding the evidence from 1999 for five days running.

A digital copy of all the files exists, according to diplomats, and nothing of value was lost. But the attack was a reminder of the vulnerability of confidential files filled with potentially sensitive information that had been built up by UN prosecutors only to be left behind in East Timor.

Longuinhos Monteiro, East Timor's prosecutor-general, says 5-10 per cent of the evidence went missing during the May looting. But much has since been recovered. Files for the unit's highest- profile case – that against the former Indonesian armed forces chief Wiranto - were found tossed in the corner of an adjacent trailer. Four boxes of taped witness interviews, meanwhile, were returned by a looter in exchange for amnesty and a fridge, Mr Monteiro said.

More than 1,400 people – including the Financial Times correspondent, Sander Thoenes – were killed in the 1999 violence, largely at the hands of the Indonesian military and pro-Jakarta militias.

In the resolutions that followed, the UN Security Council made justice a priority, establishing a special "Serious Crimes" tribunal of local and international judges and a special prosecutorial unit. UN prosecutors eventually filed 95 indictments against 391 people – more than 300 of whom are thought to be in Indonesia – and won convictions against 85 defendants, most of them minor militia members.

But Indonesian resistance, East Timorese leaders' eagerness to have good relations with Jakarta, and an international community eager not to upset a newly democratic Indonesia caused the process to stall, and the tribunal and prosecutorial unit were shut in May 2005.

In a forthcoming report critical of the UN process in East Timor, David Cohen, a war crimes expert of the University of California, Berkeley, accuses the UN of not doing enough to help leave a functioning judicial system behind. And Mr Fonseca, the rights activist, argues that the UN "failed to teach the Timorese society about the notion of legal responsibility".

Others say the unresolved legacy of 1999 has just added to a violent culture built up through centuries of first Portuguese and then Indonesian oppression.

UN judiciary efforts in East Timor criticised

Financial Times (UK) - June 18, 2006

Shawn Donnan, Jakarta – The United Nations' efforts to seek justice for the 1999 atrocities in East Timor were plagued by mistakes and missteps, abandoned prematurely, and have contributed to the fragile state of the tiny country's fledgling judiciary, according to a forthcoming report.

The 140-page study written for the US-funded East-West Center by a leading expert on international war crimes tribunals comes as the UN faces criticism over its nation-building efforts in East Timor.

The recent critiques followed the deployment of an Australian-led peacekeeping force to East Timor to address the worst violence seen there since Indonesia's scorched-earth withdrawal in 1999 left up to 1,500 dead.

The report, written by David Cohen, head of the War Crimes Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained by the Financial Times, is surfacing as the UN takes a leading role in a fresh investigation into recent atrocities in East Timor.

Among those is the May 25 massacre of 10 unarmed local policemen who were convinced to lay down their weapons by UN police advisers trying to negotiate an end to a siege by East Timorese soldiers of the national police headquarters.

Sukehiro Hasegawa, the UN's top official in East Timor, indicated on Friday that the new process – which will see any charges tried in a local Timorese court – would need a substantial UN engagement. The court's building would take a year to repair following damage done in a recent wave of looting, he said. But Mr Hasegawa said he had also been told by local and international judges already working in East Timor that "additional judges, court clerks, translators/interpreters and defence lawyers" would be needed.

Efforts to bring leading Indonesian generals and others to trial for the 1999 violence have been stalled for years, thanks largely to Indonesia's refusal to hand over suspects and the international community's reluctance to pressure a newly democratic Indonesia. East Timorese leaders have also declined to push the issue for the sake of good relations with Jakarta.

But the East-West Center report focuses on what it argues are failings by the UN, which ran a special "hybrid" UN/local tribunal to hear "serious crimes" cases related to the 1999 violence from June 2000 until May 2005. During that time UN prosecutors filed 95 indictments against 391 people, more than 300 of which are thought to be in Indonesia.

"At the root of all the problems of the Serious Crimes process," Mr Cohen writes, "was the failure by the UN to ensure proper leadership, a clear mandate, political will, and clear 'ownership' of the process from the very beginning."

The report accuses the UN of a "massive institutional failure... to create a judicial enterprise worthy of the values and standards that the United Nations represents".

The UN, Mr Cohen writes, also missed a good opportunity to use Timorese judges involved in the special tribunal as the building blocks of a new judicial system.

Transition & development

Problems 'left behind by UN transition'

Green Left Weekly - June 21, 2006

Tomas Freitas is the director of Luta Hamutuk (Fight Together), a research and advocacy institute focusing on economic issues, including East Timor's Petroleum Fund. The Petroleum Fund is a mechanism to regulate the expenditure of East Timor's oil and gas proceeds. Freitas was involved in the Timorese clandestine movement against Indonesian occupation and more recently, the campaign for fair maritime boundaries in the Timor Sea. He was interviewed by Green Left Weekly's Vannessa Hearman.

Freitas told GLW that the proposal to establish an "inquiry" into the violence in East Timor, possibly to be conducted by the United Nations, "is a very good idea", but that "it won't resolve the problems of East Timor".

"The crisis here is not some spontaneous crisis, but is a result of the accumulation of problems left behind by the UN during the transition period [towards independence], especially the decision to change from Falintil [the national liberation army] to setting up the East Timor Defence Force [FDTL].

"The UN Transitional Administration in East Timor should not have overturned Falintil just like that. Falintil should have been allowed to continue to exist for the time being – perhaps another 3-5 years – and after the veterans of the guerrilla movement have reached pension age, they could be retired from the forces." Freitas said that an inquiry would not be sufficient to address perceptions that "not enough has been done for those who gave up their lives for the guerrilla struggle".

According to Freitas, "kontroladu" (under control) is the term used by East Timor's leaders to describe the current situation in Dili. "But only during daylight hours. At night time, the situation is still tense, although the people try to entertain themselves by watching the World Cup. Those living on the outskirts are still afraid. Smoke from possibly burning houses can be seen at night. The arson attacks seem to be focused on houses of bureaucrats or members of the government on the edges of Dili.

"Some ministries have started to operate again during the day, but offices of the ministries for agriculture, mineral resources and energy policy and for development have been looted. Computers, desks, chairs, motorbikes and cars have all been destroyed or stolen. Schools and universities are almost totally inactive. Parliamentary sessions started being televised again, as [President] Xanana Gusmao gave his first speech to parliament about the crisis situation."

Within the FDTL, "Low wages is one complaint, as well as the lack of productive and useful activities", Freitas said. "In 2005, 300 members of the armed forces left voluntarily. One of them, Julio – an old friend of mine – had joined Falintil in 1992. He was recruited to the FDTL, but left as he felt he wasn't doing anything productive. The main activities at the Metinaro Barracks were shooting practice with a small amount of bullets, and lots of waiting around, eating and sleeping. Imagine – an ex- guerrilla who used to take on the Indonesian military in the jungle. He couldn't cope with the boredom."

Freitas told GLW that most of East Timor's political parties are saying little about the crisis. "The only ones making public statements are Xanana Gusmao, [Prime Minister] Mari Alkatiri and [foreign minister] Jose Ramos Horta. The NGOs are concentrating on distributing food and water to the refugee camps, while not paying any attention to the substantive political issue that has created the refugees in the first place."

According to Freitas, it is unclear what solutions are being offered by those political forces pressuring for Alkatiri to resign. "Some are calling for a change to a presidential system, from the current semi-presidential system. Some say that it is better if East Timor becomes part of a federation with Australia or Portugal.

"I think it would be very difficult for them to resolve our problems. It seems what they most want is for Alkatiri and [the ruling party] Fretilin to go. They are concerned that Fretilin would win the 2007 elections again, if they wait until election time. They don't wish to wait another five years, after the 2007 elections. Some of them are supported by the US and Australia, who would rather the Alkatiri government be gone.

"The US is unhappy with East Timor's close diplomatic relations with China and Cuba, and the Cuban scholarships given to Timorese medical students. Australia has long had problems with the Timorese government over the oil resources and the issue of whether the pipeline should go to Darwin or Timor."

Opinion & analysis

East Timor: Roots of the political crisis

Green Left Weekly - June 28, 2006

Nick Everett – East Timor's current political crisis began when a group of soldiers from the country's west – which grew from 140 to 591 – signed a petition claiming discrimination inside the 1300-strong East Timorese Defence Force (FDTL). In March they were dismissed by the FDTL chief of staff and former commander of Falintil (the armed wing of the pre-1999 national liberation movement), Taur Matan Ruak.

On April 28, a demonstration by the petitioners turned violent. In the rioting that followed, at least 25 people were killed and 130,000 people fled their homes. Rebel army leader Major Alfredo Reinado took to the mountains with a separate group of soldiers, demanding Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's resignation and claiming to be loyal to President Xanana Gusmao. Reinado, who was trained at the Australian Defence Force Academy, has "at least implicit support from Catholic Church leaders, and the Australian and US governments", according to Sydney University lecturer Tim Anderson.

While claiming to be "neutral" on the dispute between the economic nationalist Alkatiri and Xanana and other elite politicians, the Australian government has been quick to condemn Alkatiri's leadership, declaring East Timor a "failed state".

PM John Howard claims East Timor has been "badly governed". Foreign minister Alexander Downer – responsible for depriving East Timor of $1 million per day in oil and gas revenue – declared "the East Timorese themselves are responsible for what has happened... no-one else is". And defence minister Brendan Nelson chimed in with: "If East Timor is allowed to be a failed state in our region, we know that it will be a target for trans- national crime, also for terrorism."

The Australian ruling class is increasing its interference in East Timor's political affairs, seeking to further undermine the 1999 victory of the East Timor solidarity movement, which reversed a 24-year policy of support for Jakarta's military occupation of East Timor and forced the Howard government to acquiesce to a UN intervention that assisted the nation's self- determination.

Forgotten history

After the arrival of 2200 troops from Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia in late May, a concerted campaign began in the Australian corporate media to demonise Alkatiri, while presenting his rivals – Gusmao and recently promoted defence minister Jose Ramos Horta – as "responsible leaders".

On June 1, the Australian's Greg Sheridan asserted that "Alkatiri has been the author of every calamitous decision the East Timorese Government has made". Sheridan called for Alkatiri's resignation on June 3, claiming, "If [the Australian government] cannot translate the leverage of 1300 troops, 50 policemen, hundreds of support personnel, buckets of aid and a critical international rescue mission into enough influence to get rid of a disastrous Marxist Prime Minister, then [it is] just not very skilled in the arts of influence, tutelage, sponsorship and, ultimately, promoting the national interest".

Sheridan's defence of Australia's "national interest" was not a call for peaceful relations with the people of East Timor, but a blatant bid to strengthen an Australian corporate monopoly over US$30 billion worth of oil and gas in the Timor Sea.

Chris Barrie, former chief of the Australian Defence Force, told the Age: "Maybe we were too quick to blame the whole [pre- independence] problem on the militia and Indonesia, rather than the East Timorese themselves and their own unresolved societal tensions." Likewise, the Sydney Morning Herald's Gerard Henderson blamed "clan-based violence in East Timor", claiming this was endemic both "before the Indonesian army arrived in 1975" and "since the pro-Indonesia militia was dispersed by Interfet in 1999".

Yet Australia's corporate media has avoided reference to the collective trauma experienced by East Timor's population during 24 years of military occupation.

The Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR), established in 2002 to investigate and document human rights violations in East Timor between 1974 and 1999, estimated that the number of conflict-related deaths in that period was 102,800-183,000, out of a total population of well under a million. CAVR concluded that 90% of the killings were carried out either by the Indonesian military (58%) or their East Timorese auxiliaries (32%).

A study published in The Lancet in 2000, based on a survey of 1033 East Timorese households, found 975 had suffered trauma during the occupation, three quarters had experienced combat and more than half had come close to death. In addition, 39% had suffered torture, 22% had witnessed the murder of relatives or friends and one-third had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

As a result of the Serious Crimes Unit, which operated between 2002 and 2004, 339 suspects were charged – mostly former Indonesian generals. Despite this, and a sham Human Rights Court in Jakarta, all of the non-Timorese perpetrators remain at large, not only protected by Indonesia, but by the Australian, British and US governments, which have strongly opposed an international war crimes tribunal.

To date, Gusmao, Horta and Alkatiri have also opposed calls for an international war crimes tribunal. Last year, Horta negotiated with Indonesia to set up a Commission of Truth and Friendship that will recommend the granting of amnesties to war criminals.

The failure of East Timor's political elite to address this injustice remains a deep source of discontent, along with the extreme impoverishment of the majority of the population. Unemployment is over 50% and more than 40% of East Timorese people still subsist below the poverty line on less than $0.55 per day.

UN disaster

The primary responsibility for this social disaster rests with the neoliberal economic policies imposed on East Timor under the United Nations Transitional Authority for East Timor (UNTAET) between 1999 and 2002. Following the withdrawal of the Indonesian military, the UN handed the World Bank the job of managing East Timor's reconstruction by administering funds donated by UN member states through the Trust Fund for East Timor (TFET). East Timor's donors demanded a compliant government beholden to powerful corporate interests.

Since 1999, international donors have committed an estimated $3 billion for "post-conflict reconstruction" in East Timor. A European Commission evaluation of the TFET noted that over a third of allocated funds were eaten up by foreign consultants' fees, overheads and tied procurements, leaving little to address urgent problems of malnourishment, food security, clean water, preventable diseases and unemployment. Many former Falintil fighters particularly suffered.

In 2001, UNTAET established the FDTL and the PNTL through an agreement with the National Council, a consultative body of East Timorese political leaders headed by Gusmao. On advice from Kings College, London, UNTAET and the National Council set criteria for recruitment to the FDTL that could not be met by many former Falintil guerrilla fighters. Falintil veterans who were not successful were "reintegrated" into civilian life through a World Bank-funded program that left many poor and destitute.

According to Rahung Nasution, a Dili-based film-maker working for the Popular Education Institute, the transformation of Falintil into a regular army "destroyed the relationship which evolved along the struggle... between the armed guerrilla fighters".

The demobilisation of Falintil – a force that could potentially have been mobilised for reconstruction projects within the country – was symptomatic of the demobilisation of the broader national liberation movement and an increasing reliance on foreign governments – particularly Australia and Portugal – to assist in reconstruction.

"In 1975, Fretilin integrated the struggle for national liberation with people's liberation through cooperative programs, eradication of illiteracy and development of a national culture. At that time Fretilin became a people's political force with a clear vision about the future of an independent Timor Leste. Unfortunately, these popular ideas which flourished in the 1970s are considered by many sections within Fretilin as outdated", said Nasution. "The liberal democracy promoted by the UN has turned political parties into electoral machines... in which popular participation is removed."

Alkatiri

While East Timor's political elite – including many of Alkatiri's Fretilin "comrades" – have sought to position themselves to benefit from their relationships with foreign donors, Alkatiri has so far resisted pressure to accept World Bank and IMF loans.

Alkatiri's government has established a Petroleum Fund, seeking to invest 90% of the national wealth obtained from oil and gas in long-term investment, while committing 10% to spending on health, education and agricultural programs. The Alkatiri government also plans to set up a state-owned petroleum company, assisted by China, Malaysia and Brazil, aimed at obtaining a bigger share of oil and gas revenue from the Timor Sea.

A domestic rice industry has increased production from 37,000 to 65,000 tonnes between 1998 and 2004, using aid to fund public grain silos, against policies advocated by the Australian government and the World Bank.

Through bilateral agreements between East Timor and Cuba, 220 Cuban doctors and 30 Cuban health technicians are working in clinics across 13 districts; hundreds of East Timorese students are studying medicine in Cuba (there are only 55 trained Timorese doctors); and Cuban education trainers are working alongside local teachers as part of a program of illiteracy eradication.

These modest measures have come under attack from much of East Timor's elite. In 2005, Alkatiri's opposition to compulsory religious education in schools prompted church-led protests, which had the backing of the US ambassador. These protests demanded the criminalisation of homosexuality and abortion, Alkatiri's resignation and the removal of "communists" from the government.

At the same time, Alkatiri has also been roundly criticised for a defamation law that severely curtails civil liberties.

Author Clinton Fernandes, in his book Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor, observed in 2004 that the East Timorese leadership "remains wary of harnessing the momentum of its people, choosing instead to make deals with Australian and Portuguese corporate interests, as well as with other international forces. [East Timor] finds its political independence constrained by its dependent, neo-colonial economy."

Today an East Timorese bourgeoisie – represented not only by Horta and Xanana, but also by an increasingly dominant faction within Fretilin – is consolidating its strength, based on close ties with Australian and other Western governments.

If Alkatiri is ousted, it will mark a significant setback for the East Timorese people and will consolidate Fretilin's transformation from a national liberation movement into a club of beneficiaries of foreign donor funds and the country's oil wealth.

If East Timor is to be genuinely free of the designs of its neo- colonial masters, it will require the mobilisation of its people, backed by the revival of a powerful solidarity movement in Australia.

Petty divisions exploited for political gain: analysts

Agence France Presse - June 27, 2006

Singapore – Petty regional divisions have been stirred up for political gain in East Timor which is still struggling to define its identity after centuries of foreign domination, analysts say.

The worst crisis since Southeast Asia's poorest nation gained independence four years ago reached its peak Monday when unpopular Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri resigned.

Alkatiri had faced demands to quit since late May when firefights broke out between factions of the military, and between the army and police, which degenerated into gang violence in the capital Dili.

The unrest followed Alkatiri's sacking in March of 600 army deserters – nearly half the nation's military – after they complained of discrimination.

Gangs that later began burning and looting houses in Dili claimed to be acting in the name of Loro Monu, the western part of the country, or Loro Sae, the east. Scattered gunfire terrorized Dili residents.

"East-West rivalry never existed in East Timor," said Loro Horta, son of the country's Nobel Prize-winning former foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta.

"Now it has been manipulated to the point I believe it is going to be the main challenge for the future," said Loro Horta, 27, who has just completed a master's program at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.

Damien Kingsbury of Australia's Deakin University agreed the East-West issue was exploited. "That's a pretty artificial distinction," he said. "This has only really arisen in the last few weeks."

East Timor's prosecutor general Longuinhos Monteiro and an international team of prosecutors have been investigating who was behind the violence. He said last week that former interior minister Rogerio Lobato faces charges including distributing state weapons to civilians.

Alkatiri will also be questioned this week over allegations he authorised the arming of a hit squad tasked with silencing his opponents, Monteiro said Tuesday. The former prime minister has repeatedly denied the allegations.

East Timor has only about one million inhabitants and the Roman Catholic bishop of Dili, Alberto Ricardo da Silva, told AFP in Dili this month that its people do not think about regional differences. "Political parties want to... use that and want to divide. They want to make provocation," he said.

At the same time, Kingsbury said the sacked soldiers did have legitimate grievances. Younger recruits, for example, felt older veterans of the fighting against Indonesian occupiers – much of which occurred in the east of the country – received preferential treatment.

Horta and Kingsbury agreed Alkatiri, who is widely seen as having an authoritarian style of leadership, was technically right for firing the army deserters. But the matter should have been handled "with a great deal more delicacy and sensitivity," said Kingsbury.

He said Major Alfredo Reinado, who declared himself leader of the sacked soldiers, "came into the picture after the soldiers resigned" and had his own personal grievances.

Horta – whose father is a possible candidate to replace Alkatiri – said Reinado had been the subject of a previous case of indiscipline when he commanded the country's navy, which consisted of two small boats.

In the tightly-knit world of East Timorese politics, Horta's mother is also a possible candidate to be the new prime minister. Anna Pessoa is the current Minister for State.

The violence that began in late May left at least 21 people dead, drove about 60,000 into Dili refugee camps, and prompted the government to seek the intervention of more than 2,200 foreign peacekeepers to restore order.

Horta said the groups which terrorized Dili were mostly "criminal gangs, groups of unemployed thugs going back to Indonesian times."

After 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule, Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and occupied it for 24 years until a United Nations referendum in 1999 when East Timorese voted for independence.

Dream of democracy, like Timor's people, broken

Canberra Times - June 27, 2006

James Dunn – The reluctant resignation of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri yesterday may have eased the crisis in East Timor, but the situation will remain very unsettled until the underlying issues have been resolved.

The violence on the streets of Dili may have subsided, but the outcome, if not handled circumspectly, could revive some divisive political differences that go back a long way.

The present crisis has gone well beyond disputes involving a discontented military, and has become a major political crisis that could still tear the nation apart if mishandled.

The issues are quite complex and interpreting them will test the skills of all parties involved, including our media, whose role so far has tended to be inquisitorial and partisan. The underlying political issues go back a long way. Fretilin's leading role in the armed struggle against Indonesian occupation gave that party an enormous advantage in the political run-up to the first election.

Not surprisingly it won a handsome majority (55 of the 88 seats) from a grateful electorate, a decisive victory which led to fears among Fretilin opponents that the new nation's government would lead to a one-party state.

During the 2001 election campaign such fears caused President Xanana Gusmao and Jose Ramos Horta, who had earlier been Fretilin leaders (Ramos Horta was one of its founders) to stress their independent status, and to encourage the development of the kind of political diversity that would ensure a balance in the new nation's political establishment. They did not succeed.

By and large the opposition parties polled weakly and the outcome gave great power to Fretilin and its leader, Mari Alkatiri, one that caused disquiet, and not only among other party supporters.

Discontent increased in the first years of independence when the weakening Timor Leste economy encouraged a wave of pessimism, and growing disenchantment with the Alkatiri Government, which, in the circumstances, was doing its best.

In fact the Alkatiri Government proved itself to be a reasonably efficient manager at a difficult time for East Timor's weakling economy.

The most explosive element was the massive unemployment in a country powerless to ease the misery of the jobless with unemployment benefits. At the time of independence unemployment stood at more than 60 per cent, and, in the circumstances of the time, to reduce it was an impossible mission.

Not surprisingly, the popularity of the Fretilin Party declined accordingly. It represents a pattern quite common in the histories of newly independent states, whose governing parties can hardly be blamed for failing in situations that would have defied the most skilful managers.

This background is generally poorly understood by our media, whose aggressive reporting can add to the tensions among a people already confused and disturbed. For the Timorese, democracy is a new experience, one that excited them during the UN tutelage, and at independence, but they are now confronted with the downside of the democratic experience – the mayhem, the social disruption, that occurs when the political balance breaks down.

Hence a key challenge before Mari Alkatiri's successor will be to restore the confidence of the electorate in a system that was supposed to lead them to national cohesion, observance of human rights and greater prosperity, but let them down.

From this point of view the next weeks will be critical for the political leaders of East Timor. It is essential that the present instability should be overcome, based on a comprehensive campaign to restore popular confidence in the institutions of democracy.

This should involve the political impartial participation of the UN and other interested parties, such as Australia. We must, however, avoid partisan positions that could exacerbate the tensions ignited by recent events.

In this context, we should not regard Mari Alkatiri insensitively. His resignation was demanded for alleged misdeeds exposed by the foreign media, and not considered by the Timor Leste parliament. It may well turn out that his main misdeed was one of omission. So far the only identified bad apple on the government side has been Rogerio Lobato, the sacked minister for the interior, who is now under house arrest. Mr Alkatiri's guilt or complicity in these serious charges still has to be established, and that presumably will be the task facing UN investigators.

The most serious accusation is that a secret armed group was charged with eliminating Fretilin's political opponents. Clearly Lobato was behind this operation, but the big question is: did the prime minister authorise, or know about it?

These questions need to be answered quickly, because of the severe damage the affair has inflicted on Timor Leste's fledgling democracy, but investigating it will inevitably take time. One solution would be an early election, but to hold an election in the present turbulent environment would be to invite unacceptable violence. It would be preferable to wait until May, the designated time for the next election.

In the meantime it should be possible to stabilise East Timorese society, minimising the risk of violence in the campaign activities of rival political parties. This crisis has clearly distressed President Xanana Gusmao, Jose Ramos Horta and other leaders, whose dream of a democratic Timorese society living peacefully and harmoniously in their beautiful environment has been suddenly shattered.

Many are asking the obvious question: why did Timor Leste's democratic state, which was so tenderly put together under the tutelage of Sergio Vieira de Mello and his advisers, fail to arrest the new nation's slide into violence?

The answer has nothing to do with the legitimacy of East Timor's nationhood. However, it reminds us that democracy is not built in a day. At the outset its essential principles need to be firmly rooted in those institutions with the capacity to endanger it.

[James Dunn is a former Australian diplomat who has written extensively on East Timor.]

Expert analyses on East Timor political situation

Radio Australia - June 26, 2006

Mark Colvin: I'm joined now by Damien Kingsbury, Associate Professor at Deakin University's School of International and Political Studies, a close follower of East Timor's politics for many years.

We might start with that extraordinary claim about 20,000 people waiting outside Dili who could be there doing counter demonstrations but aren't only because Fretilin is good enough to hold them back. Is that bluster and wind do you think?

Damien Kingsbury: No, I think that it's probably quite right. You've got to keep in mind that Arsenio Bano is one of the more moderate members of Fretilin and he would be one of the people, I would think, that would be looking for a peaceful resolution to this political problem.

If Arsenio is saying that there is 20,000 people just outside of Dili, and I think I know where they would be, then that is probably quite right. If you listen carefully to what he was saying though, he was saying the Fretilin recognises that bringing them into town is not the way to resolve this problem or take it any further, and essentially is holding it back. So I think that his, the comments he is making is actually an expression of moderation in these circumstances.

Mark Colvin: So something quite serious has been, or is being adverted here?

Damien Kingsbury: Ah, possibly, possibly. I mean, there is always going to be a chance of a backlash against a resignation of somebody like Mari Alkatiri. He does have support, there's no question about that, but I think what is important to note is that his resignation, and it will be accepted, is entirely constitutional and I think that was always going to be the critical issue.

Fretilin will contain the control of the Parliament as the, overwhelmingly, the biggest party, and will almost certainly elect a new prime minister from within its ranks.

Now, if that happens, as we would expect, and that should be a conventional transition, it should be peaceful, and I think that Fretilin will still be seen to be in power, it will have had the opportunity to chose a new leader, and I think Fretilin supporters should be quite satisfied, and indeed quite happy with that.

Mark Colvin: Will, let's, I know that Mari Alkatiri, Rogerio Lobato haven't been tried yet and they're entitled to the presumption of innocence, but it is equally clear that whatever happens in those trials, there has been, as it were, dirty work at the cross roads. Will the new cabinet be clean?

Damien Kingsbury: Look, I think there's a couple of options for the future. There's a group within Fretilin, known as the reformation group, which actually tried to vote Alkatiri out during May and there were claims that essentially these people were strong-armed in the central committee meeting which was meant to consider this matter and hence did not actually launch the vote of no confidence against Alkatiri.

Mark Colvin: And there was an abortive attempt to run against him.

Damien Kingsbury: That's right, that's exactly what happened and these people were threatened and hence nothing happened. But I think what we need to understand is that there's a very significant group within Fretilin, and probably a majority, I think that would really be very happy to see Alkatiri go and would be very happy to see him replaced by a much more moderate, much more inclusive and participatory sort of prime minister.

I think that when this person is elected, that we will see the party coming together. It will cohere around this person, it will try to rebuild itself, I suspect that the new cabinet that will be appointed will be quite inclusive, so that there won't be necessarily a purge of Alkatiri supporters, although possibly one or two could go. But it will really be a case of Fretilin trying to ensure that it doesn't fragment as a consequence of this resignation.

Mark Colvin: Will it fragment though, because there must be very considerable disillusion with the party after the revelations about hit squads and so forth?

Damien Kingsbury: I think, I think there's certainly a lot of disillusionment, but the overwhelming majority of the party is that which was in East Timor during the period of the Indonesian occupation.

I think that if you look at Alkatiri and his closest cohorts, they are the people who are not in East Timor, indeed they are the so called Mozambique clique, or some members of the Mozambique clique, who really were just not in touch with the East Timorese people. And I think that really, the party will continue on, regardless of whether this Mozambique clique has a prominent position within it.

Mark Colvin: So is the right question to ask you then; will this now clean out the Mozambique clique? Is that what you are saying?

Damien Kingsbury: Well, I don't know if it will clean it out. Like I said, I think that there will be some attempt to try and bring the party back together, to make it sort of solid again and there would be some sort of reconciliation process.

So those members who have not sullied their reputations too badly would probably continue to have a future, but I think that certainly some of the harder line members, or some of those members who have sullied their reputations, including Alkatiri obviously, would not have much of a future in the party.

Alkatiri, I don't think is going to resign from Parliament but he might choose to reconsider his political options when the next elections come up.

Mark Colvin: Also depending on what the Prosecutor General does.

Anyway, thank you very much Damien Kingsbury.

Damien Kingsbury: My pleasure.

Mark Colvin: Damien Kingsbury is Associate Professor at Deakin University School of Political and International Studies.

East Timor's 'wrong kind of leader'

BBC News Online - June 26, 2006

Jonathan Head – It was with a characteristically unemotional performance that Mari Alkatiri announced the end of his – and East Timor's – first prime ministerial term.

"Having reflected deeply on the present situation prevailing in the country, assuming my own share of responsibility for the crisis, I am ready to resign from my position as prime minister," he told a press conference in Dili.

This, after weeks of pressure, during which he had repeatedly insisted his resignation would solve nothing, and had received the full backing of his party, Fretilin, which holds a majority of the seats in parliament. So why the change of heart?

Mr Alkatiri referred to his desire to avoid a threatened resignation by President Xanana Gusmao – but that threat was made last week, and then withdrawn, so it is difficult to understand why it would have changed his mind now.

More likely it was the continued discussions with his colleagues in government on how to get East Timor out of the mess it is in that persuaded Mr Alkatiri to go. He has long been indifferent to his own unpopularity, but in the current chaos the country needs a less divisive leader.

There was jubilation over the decision across the capital, Dili, and probably in many other areas of East Timor.

Mr Alkatiri has become a hate-figure, blamed for everything that has gone wrong in the country, and it was hard to see how rebuilding confidence and stability after the traumatic events of the past few weeks could start while he remained in office. But was he really so bad?

Brusque manner

You hear many complaints about Mr Alkatiri, some of them obviously unjust. I have often heard young people complain that he is a Muslim, as though that is a crime in a supposedly democratic and tolerant country. They also accuse him of being a communist, because of his left-wing views and his long years living in Mozambique.

But these may at times have served East Timor well. His instinctive mistrust of Western help led him to drive a very hard bargain with Australia over East Timor's rights to oil and gas in the Timor Sea, helped by his skills as a negotiator. It is unlikely anyone else could have done as well for the country.

He also has a deep personal commitment to the sustainable development of his country, and has tried hard to avoid too much aid dependency – ideas formed during his African exile.

Much of his unpopularity is due to his brusque, business-like manner. He is an intellectual, impatient with people who express poorly thought-out ideas.

He has never seemed able to empathise with the suffering experienced by much of the population during the Indonesian occupation, or to find the right words to comfort those who are often unable to articulate what they feel about those years.

By contrast, President Gusmao is a master of the art of healing. With a few simple words, or just a hug, he can move crowds to tears.

Shortage of talent

The two men who have been running the country since independence could hardly have more different styles, and they have had a very uneasy relationship with each other.

Much of that goes back to Mr Gusmao's distrust of the Fretilin party, which he blames for harsh treatment of its rivals during the bitter struggle against Indonesian rule.

Mr Alkatiri is a consummate party man – Fretilin reaffirmed its backing for him three times in recent weeks, the last time less than 24 hours before he resigned. The party remained loyal to the end, but he was arguably the wrong kind of leader for a country as traumatised as East Timor.

More serious are the charges against Mr Alkatiri of corruption, and abuses of power. Some of these will now be examined by an internationally-supervised investigation, as East Timor's infant judiciary is not up to the job. Some corruption is perhaps inevitable, given the traditions of patronage and money-politics that prevail elsewhere in the region, but the charges of abusing his power are more serious.

A documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners programme claims to have documentary evidence that Mr Alkatiri tacitly approved of the distribution of police weapons to civilians – a charge that has already led to the arrest of former Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato, at one time an ally of the prime minister. Mr Alkatiri has denied the charges, and the prosecutor-general says he has not yet uncovered any evidence against him.

Certainly the murky events leading up to and after the fateful decision by Mr Alkatiri to endorse sacking more than a third of the army earlier this year need more investigation.

The fact that he was re-elected at the Fretilin party congress last month by a show of hands, rather by a secret ballot, does not reflect well on his democratic values.

But it is also worth remembering that East Timor has few capable leaders. Education levels are among the world's lowest, and the long years of conflict under Indonesia's occupation, and Indonesia's chaotic withdrawal in 1999, left few local people with experience of government. Mari Alkatiri is among the best they have. The country can ill-afford the loss of his abilities.

Of coup plots and shadowy foreigners

New Zealand Herald - June 22, 2006

John Martinkus – The East Timorese Prime Minister has added to the murk surrounding the country's descent into violence by accusing opposition groups backed by foreigners of conspiring to overthrow his Government in an armed coup.

And his claims have been backed by senior sources within the Defence Force, who say there have been three coup plots in the past 18 months.

Mari Alkatiri, himself accused of arranging a hit squad to eliminate his critics, has for the first time given his version of what led to the Dili chaos in late May.

The breakdown of law and order led to 130,000 internal refugees and the deployment of 2200 troops from Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia.

He accused opposition groups and their foreign supporters of repeatedly trying to convince prominent commanders in the East Timorese armed forces to overthrow his Government.

"They were always trying to get the command of [former guerrilla fighters] Falintil, F-FDTL [defence forces]. They tried to convince the command to order and participate in a coup. They failed."

He claimed his opponents then tried to weaken the influence of the military. "They tried to break Falintil and they did it by bringing out of the barracks almost 600."

He says his political opponents exploited ethnic divisions within the police force (PNTL) to create unrest.

"They succeeded in dividing the people within the PNTL. This is the whole strategy. Then they put groups of [police] against groups of [soldiers] in confrontation. And they succeeded again. This is why I requested assistance from outside," he said.

Senior sources within the armed forces command confirmed that not one but three separate approaches had been made to its leadership to lead a coup against Alkatiri in the past 18 months.

I was able to confirm that following the weeks of mass demonstrations against Alkatiri's Government in April 2005 the Defence Force commander, Brigadier Taur Matan Ruak, was approached to lead a coup.

He rejected the offer. Again early this year he was approached and requested to lead a coup in a meeting with two prominent East Timorese leaders and two foreign nationals. Again he refused, reportedly telling them it was against the constitution and would set an unacceptable precedent.

One of his leading deputies, Lieutenant Colonel Falur Rate Laek, a former regional commander from Falintil and a veteran of the war against Indonesia, was also approached by the same two local leaders and foreign nationals. He also refused and reported the incident to his command.

Due to the sensitivity of the information and the implications for the current situation, the nationalities of the foreigners were not revealed.

The armed forces believe that last month's lawlessness was an attempt to divide and destroy them as retribution for the Army's command refusing to take part in a coup.

The Prime Minister was adamant the violence was orchestrated as a part of a programme to topple his Government.

"It has to be institutions, some organisations, inside assisted by others outside," he said. "I think there are outside groups from Australia maybe from Indonesia but not the Governments. I am not accusing the Government of Indonesia or the Government of Australia.

But still I do believe there are outside groups. We need some time to investigate this but the whole plan was very well done and very well executed."

It's not the first time Alkatiri has called the attempts to oust him an attempted coup. He continued to deny the accusations of a hit squad against him and his Government and dismissed them as part of a misinformation campaign run by his opposition.

He said the campaign was being run by "conservative elements in institutions" in East Timor and abroad.

Allegations against the Government of Alkatiri proved difficult to verify.

The claims that at least 60 people were killed by the Army following demonstrations in late April and buried in a mass grave to the west of the city could not be checked. The priest who had claimed to have a list with 67 names on it denied he had a list.

Then there was the allegation about Vincente "Rai Los" da Concecao, the leader of a group of armed resistance fighters, who says Alkatiri's orders were carried out by former Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato, a close ally of the PM.

Da Concecao's 30 fighters were said to be based in the mountains above the town of Liquica and equipped with automatic rifles. He claimed to have received the rifles from Alkatiri and Lobato, who is now under house arrest.

Journalists who went to meet him were surprised to be directed to the house of the Carrascalao family in the hills above Liquica.

They said he had told them he was issued the weapons to kill opponents of Alkatiri's ruling Fretilin Party. The Carrascalao family have a history of opposition to Fretilin going back to a leadership role in the UDT party which fought a civil war against Fretilin in 1975.

Alkatiri said that he knew three of the men involved in the "Rai Los" group as they had attended a Fretilin conference in May and he had briefly met them. He said he told them only to enforce security and not to kill opponents as they claimed.

Sources in the armed forces said the Rai Los men had participated in the attack on the Army base in Tacitolu. Soldiers said da Concecao was a former Falintil fighter who had been sacked in 2004 for embezzling pay cheques.

Before the allegations about supplying weapons to da Concecao were made public Alkatiri said he dismissed them as more opposition misinformation.

"The best way to overthrow somebody from power is to demonise them. That is exactly what they are trying to do and how to do it? [By] passing to media information like this that this man has a secret army with the objective to eliminate others... instead of having killed someone from the opposition what they have done is really just to fight against the [Army].

"They fought against the [Army] on May 24 in Tacitolu. What kind of secret Fretilin group is this that they are also fighting against the [Army]. This is contradictory," said Alkatiri.

While frustrations within the Timorese armed forces ignited the latest crisis, it was preceded by riots against Alkatiri's leadership in December 2001 and a prolonged protest led by the church against his Government in April 2005.

Last February a group of soldiers from the country's west – which grew from 140 to 591 – signed a petition claiming discrimination inside the 1300-strong Army. In March they were dismissed from the armed forces.

However, as events began to unfold the dispute quickly became the start of a series of calls for Alkatiri to resign. The Prime Minister was in no doubt what had taken place. He kept referring to it as an attempted coup.

The petitioners' demonstration turned violent on April 28 when he ordered the Army to take control. Police officers ran away and in some cases joined the violence. The petitioners marched back to the west of Dili and were kept there by the Army. Three people were killed in fighting and the violence began to spread.

Last week, recalling his arrival in Dili, the commander of the Australian forces, Brigadier Mick Slater, said there were two types of gang violence.

"There were definitely the opportunistic gutless thugs... I think they were probably the major source of violence in town. There were definitely groups, let's call them gangs, that were definitely being manipulated and co-ordinated by other people from outside that gang environment. I feel very, very strongly that that was the case."

Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta says Alkatiri's claims of a coup are "nonsense". "If there was a coup attempt the Prime Minister should elaborate. A coup attempt by who?"

That is a question that no one at the moment, from the military leadership, to the Prime Minister, to the commander of the Australian intervention force and the President himself, is willing to answer.

[Herald correspondent John Martinkus was in Dili last week.]

Australia - Peacekeeper or petroleum predator?

Interpress News Service - June 22, 2006

Kalinga Seneviratne, Sydney – A two month old rebellion by sacked army officials and police deserters in East Timor, one of the world's newest and poorest countries, has resulted in an Australian-led "peacekeeping" force arrival in its capital Dili, and a media-supported push for 'regime change'.

Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, a Muslim leading a predominantly Catholic country, is the leader of the Fretilin Party which fought for independence from Indonesia for over two decades, and which won a landslide victory in the first legislative elections in 2001.

In Australian media reports, which in turn influence regional and international reporting of the issue, the crisis in East Timor is painted as an internal power struggle where an "unpopular" Prime Minister is opposed by a peoples' movement. The words "oil" and "gas" are hardly mentioned in these reports, even though this is at the heart of the Australian intervention.

The history of East Timor independence is also the history of Australian policy flip-flops and attempts to lay hands on the vast oil deposits in the surrounding seas, now valued at over 30 billion US dollars. Yet, Australia has always painted its support for East Timorese independence as a "human rights" or "humanitarian" mission.

Even today the media reporting here reflects that. Speaking on ABC Radio recently, James Dunn an advisor to the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNMET) in 1999, described Alkatiri as a "politician who had close relations with the people" and added that he is also an efficient worker and a good bureaucrat, but not an "easy person to deal with".

It is his tough stance negotiating East Timor's rights to its oil and gas reserves with Australia over the past 5 years which has earned him the wrath of the Australian government – which has tried to bully its poor neighbour into submitting to Canberra's ambitions to control exploration and exploitation of these natural resources.

Rob Wesley-Smith, spokesman for a Free East Timor believes that Alkatiri has dictatorial tendencies and Fretilin has become corrupted, but, he blames the government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard for precipitating the crisis by "abrogating since 1999 all the disputed oil revenue of around 1.5 billion dollars to Australia".

"Despite this area being disputed, almost certainly under UNCLOS (UN Commission for the Law of the Sea) rules, it belongs to East Timor" he told IPS, adding that television images of Australian troops who arrived in Dili where they stood by watching as looting and burning went on made him wonder, if it was a part of a sinister plot by Canberra to declare East Timor a failed state "so that they could control the Timor Sea (oil) theft".

Wesley-Smith pointed out that while Australia took almost 1.5 billion dollars in royalties from the disputed oil fields in the Timor seas since 1999, they have given back approximately 300 million dollars in aid over the same period, thus making it dependent.

Australian academic Helen Hill, author of 'Stirring of Nationalism in East Timor", argued in a recent newspaper article that the reason Alkatiri is hated by the Canberra establishment is because, while being the only East Timorese leader standing up to Australian government bullying tactics, he has also been building links with Asian countries like China and Malaysia, Cuba, Brazil and former colonial power Portugal to help diversify East Timor's economic ties.

"He is an economic nationalist," notes Hill. "He hopes a state- owned petroleum company assisted by China, Malaysia and Brazil will enable Timor to benefit from its own oil and gas, in addition to revenue it will raise from the areas shared with Australia"..

Alkatiri has also spoken out against privatisation of electricity and managed to set up a "single desk" pharmaceutical store, despite opposition from the World Bank. He has also refused to take conditional aid from the World Bank and the IMF, invited Cuban doctors to serve in rural health centres and help in setting up a new medical school, abolished primary school fees and introduced free mid-day meals for children. All these, and the fact that he was educated and spent 24 years in exile in Marxist Mozambique have been cited by opponents in Australia as hallmarks of a communist leader.

In contrast, the rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado, a former exile in Australia is believed to have been trained at the national defence academy in Canberra, and Australia's preferred candidate for the prime ministership foreign minister Ramos Horta set up the diplomatic training programme in Sydney during his years of exile in Australia.

Speaking on ABC-TV this week, Horta argued that East Timor cannot "afford this increasing loss of credibility of the government and poor image of the country", thus Alkatiri should step aside in the interests of his own party. Dismissing allegations made in the same programme that he has armed Fretilin members to eliminate his opponents, Alkatiri said he is under no pressure to resign and he will not do so.

The current campaign against Alkatiri reeks of policy flip-flops of successive Australian governments on East Timor since 1975 attributed to its desire to control the Timor Gap oil and gas resources.

After supporting the Indonesian annexation of 1975, in 1989 Australia and Indonesia signed the Timor Gap Treaty (TGT) to share the resources in the area. The UN Transitional Authority in East Timor declared the TGT illegal and in 2001, Australia signed a MOU with the UN authority to allow continued oil exploration in the region.

But, just before East Timor became full a independent state in 2002, the Howard government announced that it would no longer submit to maritime border rulings by the World Court an act which Alkatiri described at the time as "unfriendly" and "tying the hands" of the incoming government.

Since then, Alkatiri has had a series of heated arguments with Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer over the issue. After bitter negotiations, in January Alkatiri was able to get Canberra to agree to a 90-10 share in East Timor's favour, of the proceeds from the Greater Sunrise field. That was after agreeing not to proceed for at least 40 years with East Timor's claim to the disputed sea under the UNCLOS convention, by which time most of the oil and gas in the area would be exhausted.

In 2005, the Alkatiri government was reported to have entered into negotiations with Petro China to build oil refining facitilies in East Timor, which would undermine Australian plans to build a refinery in the northern Australian city of Darwin to process all Timor Sea oil from both sides of the border. East Timor president Xanana Gusmao was to visit China this month to cement the deal, but this has been blocked by the Australian military.

Sydney University political scientist Tim Anderson believes that the Howard government plans to impose a "junta' on East Timor led by Horta and an ailing Gusmao, which would also include Catholic bishop nominees. "Presence of occupying (Australian) troops till next year's election might seriously undermine Fretilin's dominant position" he notes.

Talk Of 'failed states' unhelpful when discussing East Timor

East Timor News List - June 20, 2006

Minh Nguyen – Following a period of relative quiet, the notion of failed or failing states is again making headlines in Australia as its troops struggle to disarm warring gangs in East Timor. While such talk is designed to harvest support for the troops' presence in the country, the "failed state" label for East Timor is neither accurate nor helpful as a way forward for the new nation.

In recent weeks, key government ministers have warned that East Timor risks becoming a failed state unless the situation quickly stabilises.

The government says that Australia cannot afford to have the country turn into a failed state and, as Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson puts it, to have it "become a haven, perhaps, for transnational crime, for terrorism, and indeed humanitarian disasters and injustice."

The last time a government minister spoke so passionately about failing states in Australia's region was in mid-2003 when discussions pre-empted and explained Australia's intervention to restore law and order in the Solomon Islands.

The successful intervention in the Solomons was quickly heralded as a model for humanitarian involvement in conflict situations around the world. With support secured for Australia's involvement, the term "failing states" dropped out of vogue. Even the government's major aid policy White Paper, released last month and composed in the months before violence broke out in East Timor and the Solomons, opted for the euphemistic "fragile states" to describe these nations.

An analysis by the Uniya research centre last year of the government's use of the failed states label revealed a highly nuanced term; applied only in situations in which the Government intended to intervene militarily or had already intervened in a particular state. It comes as no surprise, then, that the term has only been used against Afghanistan, Iraq, the Solomon Islands and now East Timor.

The Government seems to think the only way of boosting domestic and international support for its overseas operations is to call forth the spectre of an "arc of instability" in the region, complete with unsubstantiated claims about a link between failed states and international terrorism and crime.

Even if it is to convince other states of the worthiness of intervention, politicising the idea of state failure – an idea that once served as a useful description for states where human rights were abused – is not only inaccurate but counter- productive. For East Timor, an already difficult situation could be made worse by implicitly taking sides in the conflict; or worse still, by implying that the East Timorese would have fared better under Indonesian occupation.

In the latest issue of The Monthly, Paul Keating's former speechwriter Don Watson suggests what the thinking was behind Australia's previous support for Indonesian occupation: "Life under a murderous occupation ... might be better than life in a failed state, albeit one perennially dependent on Australian aid and Australian policy. What is more, in an imperfect world Suharto's Indonesia was a lot better than its critics were willing to concede."

Australia cannot afford a return to such thinking. The idea that independence was a mistake will not sit well with the families of the victims of former dictator Suharto's brutal occupation, an occupation that resulted in the death of more than 100,000 people, of whom approximately 18,600 died directly at the hands of the Indonesian military, according to California-based Benetech's statistical analysis.

The East Timorese desire for self-determination – as shown at the 1999 ballot in which 78.5 per cent voted for independence despite possible violent reprisals – cannot be so easily dismissed. While there may be truth in Gerard Henderson's claims in a recent Herald column that clan-based division is rife in the tiny country, there are no suggestions that the Kaladis (westerners) see themselves as a nation separate to that of the Firakus (easterners).

Most keen observers will say there are many factors contributing to the present crisis.

Obvious is Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's failure to accommodate the Kaladi soldiers' concerns over alleged discrimination. Others would argue that Australia's precipitous withdrawal from East Timor laid the foundation for the current conflict. Beyond this, Australia must also assess how its own "rumours" are being played out in East Timor.

Labelling East Timor as a "poorly governed" or "failing" state sends a wrong message to the East Timorese rebel leaders and could be seen to imply that Australia is keen on regime change. Such talk offers little hope for a solution that does not involve the removal of the democratically elected Prime Minister and his Fretilin party.

East Timor's political complexities cannot be reduced to simple slogans. A United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report published in January highlighted the country's shortcomings but also the positive steps it has taken in recent years. While noting its low human development index and the fact that people are still "chained by poverty", the report praised the nation's democracy as being "in the vanguard of popular participation" – hardly the sort of observations one would make of a failing state.

Robert Johnson, an occasional United Nations advisor who lives Dili, says that the blueprint for Timor's achievements is in its National Development Plan – a "roadmap" for development established through a process of national popular consultation under the leadership of the now embattled Alkatiri. With all the talk about failing states, one might be surprise to learn that Australia's aid agency has described East Timor's advancement in implementing the Plan as "impressive".

But a greater surprise comes from the World Bank. It has throughout the crisis stood by Alkatiri, the man accused by one Jakarta-based Australian journalist of being a "1960s Marxist- style 'Che Guevara' figure". The Bank director Paul Wolfowitz, a staunch "neoconservative" and former mover and shaker in the Bush administration, said last month, "Timor-Leste has achieved much, thanks to the country's sensible leadership and sound decision- making, which have helped put in place the building blocks for a stable peace and a growing economy."

Such support paints a more complex picture of an East Timor with mixed achievements and highlights the unavoidable fact that nation-building is an ongoing, long-term process. As the UNDP report prophetically concludes, the East Timorese people will face "many painful decisions" in realising where they want to go as a nation. Their journey could be made less painful through continued practical assistance from Australia. It could be made better with moral support and well-informed and robust debates. As the latest crisis approaches its second month, the last thing the East Timorese need is more rumours about a failed or failing state.

[Minh Nguyen is a researcher at Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre and has authored several reports on the human rights situation in the Asia Pacific region.]

Ethnic violence or 'breakdown in social solidarity'?

Green Left Weekly - June 14, 2006

Jon Lamb – Political tensions within the East Timorese elite continue to simmer amidst preparation for the first sitting of parliament since the arrival of the Australian-led international security force. The parliament is expected to discuss and debate the next measures to resolve the nation's political and social crisis. Following the visit of United Nations special representative Ian Martin, there is increasing support for an expanded UN-led presence.

East Timor's foreign minister and acting defence minister Jose Ramos Horta has stressed the need for a UN-led police mission to be deployed to maintain security, telling reporters on June 7 that such a force should "last at least up to two years".

A key problem remains how to deal with the sporadic violent acts by youth gangs. Much of this violence seems to have taken on a communal-like character, with angry mobs of youths with weapons threatening households or sections of suburbs. There has been widespread reportage in the Australian media of distinctive clashes between ethnic west (Loromono) and east (Lorosae) groupings.

However this ethnic distinction as the basis for the gang rivalry has been questioned by East Timorese community leaders and activists. Speaking at the "Beyond the Crisis in Timor-Leste" forum held at the Australian National University in Canberra on June 9, former student activist Antero Benedito da Silva stated that the youth gangs were symptomatic of the breakdown of social solidarity and the weakening of national identity following the formal attainment of East Timor's independence.

Similarly, the influential Bishop of Baucau, Basilio dos Nascimento, speaking in Portugal on June 8, told the Lusa news service that the theory of ethnic rivalry was "news" to him, and that there was a lack of evidence to back such claims.

The Fretilin-led government, the United Nations Office in East Timor and government opponents have alleged that the activity of some of the gangs is politically motivated. Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri claims there is evidence of political manipulation in order to force him to step down. In an interview with the Lusa news agency on June 7, Alkatiri said that "everything that is happening now began [with riots] in December 2002, more or less with the same demands and with the same groups behind it... The objective is really to topple the elected government." However, Alkatiri did not spell out who these groups are.

In an investigative report for ABC TV's Four Corners program, journalist Liz Jackson interviewed members of an armed group who claim they were recruited and given weapons by former interior minister Rogerio Lobato as a private security force to intimidate political opponents of Alkatiri.

Jackson told ABC TV's World News program on June 8: "They say that they were asked to do two things. One, to settle down differences between those people from the east and west of Timor. But also far more seriously... three of them claim that they knew their mission and were specifically told their mission was to eliminate political opponents, to eliminate the so-called petitioners' groups [soldiers protesting their sacking, which sparked the current crisis], and people who break the Fretilin rules."

While the gang members interviewed stressed that they had not killed anyone, Jackson stated: "They do claim that they were actually formulated to last a year until the next election..."

The front page of the Australian carried an article on June 9 with similar allegations. Former Falintil independence fighter Vincente da Concecao claimed he was a member of a secret hit squad of retired guerrillas working for Lobato and Alkatiri. However according to Fretilin, these allegations are a fabrication intended to discredit Alkatiri.

There is continuing pressure for Alkatiri to resign, particular given these new gang-related revelations. The problem of who would replace him, though, and the consequences of such a move appear to have tempered an open push to get rid of him, particularly any move outside the bounds of the constitution. On June 7, a large convoy-style rally of around 1000 protesters from the western districts of East Timor delivered a statement to President Xanana Gusmao in Dili calling for Alkatiri's resignation.

Speaking in Dili on June 7, Australian defence minister Brendan Nelson claimed that the Australian government was not interested in interfering in political disputes within East Timor's political elite. "The important thing from the Australian government position is that any political differences in Timor Leste be resolved legally and constitutionally", he said.

Bishop Basilio dos Nascimento stated on June 7 said that while he would welcome a change of government, such a move would not resolve East Timor's social and economic problems and that the way forward "doesn't depend solely on the resignation of the prime minister and elections".

With the gradual easing of gang violence in some parts of Dili, the level of destruction reveals significant damage to government offices (such as the attorney-general's office, where sensitive files on the Indonesian military-orchestrated destruction from 1999 are kept) and possibly more than 500 private houses burnt or destroyed since late April. Gangs have also burned houses in Ermera district, south of Dili.

According to the Catholic aid organisation Caritas, the number of people killed in the violence could be much greater than the official death toll of 20. Caritas's director in Dili, Jack de Groot, told reporters on June 7 that there needed to be an international investigation to confirm the toll, especially because of rumours of killings and other incidents heightening fears throughout Dili.

"Fears about a lack of security in this town and in this country are based on a lack of confidence that justice will be served", de Groot explained. Alkatiri said on June 7 that he supported a UN investigation.

The political turmoil does not appear to have dampened interest from international oil and gas exploration companies in bidding for exploration rights in the Joint Petroleum Development Area in the Timor Sea, jointly administered by East Timor and Australia. Some 12 companies, including the large Australian-based Santos corporation, bid for four blocks on offer in late May, at the height of the crisis.

Bungled bullying in East Timor?

Green Left Weekly - June 14, 2006

Peter Boyle – Among the cynical circles of Australian foreign policy "experts" committed to Australia playing a neo-colonial role in the Asia-Pacific region, there are some differing views on the Howard government's military intervention in the East Timor crisis. The discussion is not about how the Howard government can best help the East Timorese, but how it can best take advantage of the situation to promote Australia's "national interests".

James Cotton, professor of politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy, believes the current Australian military intervention in East Timor is a "missed opportunity".

Speaking at a public seminar at the Australian National University on June 9 entitled "Beyond the crisis in Timor-Leste: options for future stability and development", Cotton argued it is good that Australia has its troops in the country, at the invitation of the East Timorese government, because the country has been in a "pre-revolutionary", "dual power" situation since March, following the fracturing of its army and police.

A container-load of powerful weapons had been imported by PM Mari Alkatiri's brother to arm a special police unit and these arms now could not be accounted for, he charged, arguing that this alone justified the Australian military presence and the pre- positioning of Australian troops last month.

Cotton conceded that this military presence was not an effective tool for maintaining basic law and order in Dili following the collapse of the local police force. The Australian armoured personnel carriers were doing more to destroy the roads in Dili than stopping the youth gangs, he joked, but they had to ensure the safety of "our troops and police".

According to Cotton, the Howard government rushed to this latest intervention without working out its political perspective properly. The "wrong people" are in government in East Timor, he asserted, and the presence of the Australian troops today may well bolster their rule. "If we cannot have a say in who is in charge in East Timor, we should withdraw our troops."

This mistake paralleled a similar error in 1999 when the Interfet intervention had to be "cobbled together over a weekend", Cotton claimed. But not enough plans were made to ensure that Australia had a say in who would be in charge of the country when the UN Interfet force left, he said.

Cotton described East Timor as "a liability, not an asset to Australia", and while he disagreed with the aggressive approach taken by the Howard government in negotiations over proceeds from the offshore oil and gas fields between the two countries – which denied the full revenue it is entitled to under international law – he believed that the end result was fair. Australia's share, according to Cotton, was a fair payment for providing military "protection" for the Greater Sunrise gas field, which might otherwise be claimed by Indonesia.

Earlier in the seminar Bob Lowry, a retired lieutenant-colonel in Australian military intelligence and a former Australian government-seconded security adviser to the East Timorese government in 2002-03, complained that his advice to the Alkatiri government to get rid of former guerrilla army leaders from the armed forces had been rebuffed. These guerrilla leaders thought that they had a "revolutionary entitlement" and were above the law, he said, claiming the army was a "pension scheme" for them.

Lowry had also objected to the East Timorese government's desire to set up a separate national security intelligence unit, arguing that intelligence should be left to the police. Lowry argued that the current crisis was not the fault of the "international community", nor a result of the UN administration ending prematurely, but was the fault of Alkatiri and his government.

Behind the demonisation of Mari Alkatiri

Posted by Tapol - June 12, 2006

Estevao Cabral and Julie Wark – At a panel on the state of the world's media hosted by Columbia University in New York last April, the veteran journalist Robert Fisk expressed outrage at the semantic distortion that bedevils understanding of events that affect us all and, worse, affect a great many people in ways that are unimaginable, (thanks to media versions) in homes where the media has a presence and opinions are formed. He suggested that the New York Times, so prone to citing different "officials" might just as well call itself "American Officials Say".

The coverage of the recent strife in newly-independent Timor- Leste is a salient case of this. The media, especially the Australian media (News from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), has offered a particularly distorted view of the crisis. Such misrepresentations are endlessly repeated until they become "truth" in the public conscience, but they also offer confirmation of the old adage that one way to the truth is by comparison of the lies.

The prism through which the events in Timor-Leste are presented is that of the "failed state". These words are meant to ring alarm bells and Australian Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson wasted no time in pointing out that failed state equals terrorism: "If East Timor is allowed to be a failed state in our region, we know that it will be a target for trans-national crime, also for terrorism [...]."

The "failed state" tag in Australia has the added advantage of hinting at the evils lying in wait in the legitimate aspirations of the people of West Papua to independence, a very thorny diplomatic issue with Indonesia (which, though it is never mentioned, ranks number 32 on the 2006 Foreign Policy Failed States Index, below Malawi and Burkina Faso and more failed than Angola and Togo).

Evil is represented as embodied in the figure of one person. Identifying a single scapegoat suggests that his removal will magically make all well again. Many people today think of "Muslim" and "terrorist" as related, if not synonymous terms. The Muslim Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, Mari Alkatiri, appears in the press through man-in-the-street interviews as a "terrorist" (not to mention "traitor" and "killer"), a word that then returns press-verified and reinforced to the street. What lies behind these depictions of Alkatiri?

The present situation in Timor-Leste is very difficult, and Australia has not a little to do with it by putting Timor-Leste literally over the barrel with its delaying tactics in negotiations over disputed oil and gas rights, thereby denying desperately needed revenue to the country in its crucial first years.

Timor-Leste has the lowest per capita GDP in the world, $400, with over 40% of the population still subsisting below the poverty line on less than 50 US cents per day, although the first $600 million of oil revenue have now been received and billions more are expected in coming years. Food production is a huge problem in this fertile, devastated land yet Australia and the World Bank refused to rebuild the rice industry (when imports amounted to a succulent $220 million per year). With massive unemployment, the streets are full of traumatised and alienated youth with a great capacity for violence, and susceptible to attempts of diehard former militia, political factions and pro- Indonesia elements to create instability. The average age of the population is 20 years.

Another major disaffected group is the former Falantil (Forcas Armadas de Libertacao Nacional de Timor-Leste), who fought for independence. As an alliance of different ethnic groups, they prevailed in the 24 years of independence struggle largely because of their grassroots-politics skills in the local communities in which they moved.

Yet the "non-political" police force, with its better (Indonesian) training, was given priority by the transitional United Nations government (UNTAET, 1999-2002) in creating the country's (European-style) security forces. Some communities were thus over-represented and others very under-represented in terms of loyalties and recognition in a situation where all jobs were scarce.

Herein lie the roots of the "new" development of east-west hostilities and much responsibility for this may be laid at the door of the UN and its advisers from King's College London. Falintil demoralisation and anger was clear as early as 2000. "Falantil sees itself as a force that gained the victory but has never even had a victory parade", reported The Australian at the time (28 June 2000).

Added to this (already Molotov) cocktail of the factors involved in the present crisis, are the ideological and personal differences between President Xanana Gusmao and Mari Alkatiri, which were soon represented, inter alia, in the east-west ethnic hostilities.

Then, Defence Minister Roque Rodrigues and army chief Brig. Gen. Taur Matan Ruak sacked some 600 (mainly westerner) troops in April after demonstrations against discrimination. They were acting on UN legal advice, which did not save the Prime Minister from being held responsible or from being openly criticised by President Xanana Gusmao, which inflamed matters even more.

The "wily Marxist" (The Australian, May 31) Alkatiri is held responsible for everything, except in his own party Fretilin, which led the country to independence. Here he has up to 200,000 relatively politicised and mobilisable supporters, which, no doubt, is one reason why Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer changed his tune about ousting Alkatiri.

In contrast to the wily Marxist terrorist are his political rivals the "universally loved and admired" (ibid) President Xanana Gusmao, the "ever-obliging" (ibid) Nobel laureate Foreign Minister (and new Defence Minister) Josi Ramos-Horta and the "popular" Australian troops who have arrived to save the country, though they have been criticised for being notably passive about the arson and looting in sectarian attacks.

The rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado (loyal to Xanana Gusmao, grateful to Australian troops, lover of Australian VB beer and enemy of Alkatiri) is described in surprisingly neutral terms: he is merely "swaggering" and "Australian-trained".

"Mozambique" means "Marxist" in this story. During the occupation years the former Portuguese colony (and let us not forget historic links) offered scholarships for Timorese to study so that they would be prepared to return to their country as well- prepared leaders. With an academic background in law and economics, his work as a surveyor and his lobbying experience at the UN and in Africa, Mari Alkatiri was, thanks to his long years in exile in Mozambique, by far the best-equipped Timorese to negotiate the Timor Sea Agreement with Australia over natural gas and oil resources. His toughness and evident negotiating skills did not endear him to the Australians, who resorted to withdrawing from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and unilaterally issuing licences.

Again, Alkatiri was one of the main architects of the Magna Carta of the National Council of Timorese Resistance, a document that brought the country's future policies in line with international standards (such as those set by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea). An economic nationalist, he is concerned about environmental and women's issues and is against privatisation of electricity. He sees the need to diversify the country's economic options and believes that a state-owned petroleum company assisted by Norway, Portugal, China, Malaysia and Brazil will benefit Timor-Leste more than giving Australia a monopoly on its oil and gas.

Among other "unpatriotic" acts, he proposed scrapping primary school fees, rejected World Bank loans (Timor-Leste is debt- free), brought Cuban doctors to work in rural areas and set up a new medical school at the national university. Alkatiri is also condemned, as if he alone were responsible, for Portuguese being the country's official language. The lingua franca, Tetum, and Portuguese have much in common after hundreds of years of colonial contact so some linguists argue it is a logical choice, but maintaining this Lusophone link and wisely diversifying diplomatic and economic options may not be viewed so kindly in Australian official circles.

The Prime Minister is also "arrogant", which he happily accepts in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais (2 June, 2006). "Arrogant? Even my family says so. But I am sensitive. What I don't have is this Javanese culture of smiling at everything and then stabbing people in the back." This could also be called directness. Certainly, the man who comes across in this interview (where he is exceptionally permitted press space to speak for himself) is intelligent, witty and ironic, not to mention patriotic, qualities that are absent in second-hand portrayals of him in the Australian press. With regard to the contrasting personal styles of the President and the Prime Minister, it is also fair to point out a certain division of labour. Unlike the much more visible, among-the-people Xanana Gusmao, Alkatiri in his world of facts, figures and policy doesn't particularly require charm and other PR skills.

On June 4, an editorial in The Australian, apropos of the possibility of ousting Timor-Leste's Prime Minister (because "regime change" is what it is all about for everyone from the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the rebel leader Reinado, Ramos-Horta, first lady Kirsty Sword Gusmao... who have all said so in so many words), opined, "And while he commands a parliamentary majority, there is not a great deal, beyond the most discreet diplomatic advice, that Australians can do to secure the essential circuit-breaker his departure would provide."

The Australian government is set on achieving this "circuit- breaker" (a quaint euphemism for coup) through its peace-keeping operation. There are very big issues at stake in the "tiny statelet", another term journalists like to use as if smallness can divert our attention from them: abundant oil and natural gas resources, with China as a prospective partner, rejection of Australian aid-tied agricultural liberalisation policies and flying in the face of big-power politics in general.

Ramos-Horta, however, is very sympathetic to big-power security considerations, writing (in a prophetic foretaste of what the press is now saying about his country) of the US occupation of Iraq. "Retreat is not a viable option for the costs would be far too high for US vital interests in the Middle East and the world as a whole. Iraq would inevitably descend into a Somalia-like failed state [...]. (Asian Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2005). Is he equally understanding about Australia's "vital interests"?

The scene was set for a "circuit-breaker" a long time ago in the name of these interests. An Australian Defence Force document dated 10 May 2001 states, "Policy guidance... is caveated [sic] by the consideration that Australia has limited direct control over the development of the East Timor Defence Force [...]. The first objective ... is to pursue Australia's broad strategic interests in East Timor, namely denial, access and influence. The strategic interest of denial seeks to ensure that no foreign power gains an unacceptable level of access to East Timor, and is coupled with the complementary objective of seeking access to East Timor for Australia, in particular the ADF. Australia's strategic interests can also be protected and pursued more effectively if Australia maintains some degree of influence over East Timor's decision-making."

Australia has begun a long occupation of Timor-Leste and is well positioned, with very "direct control", to pursue its "strategic interest of denial" and, however much this looks like a coup, the press will pursue its "strategic interest of denial" as well.

The tragedy that is Timor

Melbourne Age - June 11, 2006

Tom Hyland – Listen carefully: that scratching you hear is the scribbling of commentators, furiously re-writing history. And if you look closely, you might glimpse a hint of schadenfreude among those who argued all along that East Timor could never be free and are now saying: we told you so.

While Dili burns, it's payback time for those nursing ancient grievances – not in Dili's dusty streets, but in the leafy avenues of the Australian media and think-tank commentariat.

It's chaos in Dili. No one's in charge and no one knows what's really going on. The Government is divided. So is the army. It's east versus west, we're told, a re-emergence of ancient tribal, clan and ethnic enmities long suppressed by the firm grip of foreign occupation.

But while there's confusion in Dili, there's certainty among some commentators, some of whom had dismissed East Timor's aspirations for independence. The implication is that these fractious Timorese tribes are innately incapable of governing themselves.

Consider what retired admiral Chris Barrie, former Australian Defence Force chief and now visiting fellow at the Australian National University, told The Age's Michelle Grattan last week: "Maybe we were too quick to blame the whole (pre-independence) problem on the militia and Indonesia, rather than the East Timorese people themselves and their own unresolved societal tensions."

This is truth overboard, from a man who should have more than a nodding acquaintance with the facts of pre-independence East Timor.

Whatever divisions have re-emerged, the East Timorese displayed unity and restraint in the face of murderous provocation during the 1999 vote for independence.

Elsewhere in the commentary, there's wistful wishful thinking. Former diplomat Allan Gyngell told Grattan that East Timor would have been better off "if it was well governed as part of a democratic Indonesia". Maybe, but we'll never know. Instead, what the Timorese knew was 24 years of non-democratic Indonesia, an experience that so scarred them that, when they were given a vote on remaining part of Indonesia, 78.5 per cent rejected it.

From The Australian's Paul Kelly we learn that ministries in Jakarta are "rocking with laughter", now that these difficult East Timorese have ceased to be Indonesia's "problem" and have become Australia's "problem".

It's time, says Kelly, to consider "harsh truths" about a story that is "more complex than the fairytale spun for Australians so long". In the process of enunciating those purported truths, Kelly rewrites history, suggesting East Timor brought the 1975 Indonesian invasion on itself.

He says Fretilin's November 1975 declaration of independence made the invasion inevitable. The harsh truth is that the inevitability of that invasion prompted the declaration of independence, not the other way round. From as early as July 1974, Indonesia had plans to win control of the then-Portuguese colony and Indonesian troops launched their initial invasion in October 1975, a month before the declaration of independence.

Gerard Henderson has also entered the fray, determined to force Australians to confront East Timor's history of internal division and what he asserts is a long record of clan-based violence. Wielding his media machete, his column in The Sydney Morning Herald, he slashed the "fashionable view" that all the violence during 1999 was caused by Indonesia.

Henderson does concede "some" of the militias who carried out the violence were backed by "some members of the Indonesian defence force". He fails to mention that "some members" included the then-commander of that force, General Wiranto, one of 440 people charged by the UN's Special Crimes Unit with crimes in 1999. Of the 440, 339 live in Indonesia, which refuses to extradite them.

Nor does Henderson mention the findings of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), which investigated and documented abuses in East Timor from 1974 until '99 – including crimes committed by Timorese themselves.

The commission found Indonesian security forces and their militia auxiliaries carried out 14,922 (95.2 per cent) of all violations reported to have been committed in 1999. It found the Indonesian military created, funded, armed and trained the militias, participated in operations with them, and failed to prevent their murderous rampages.

Henderson went on to proclaim "the unfashionable fact" that East Timor was not ready for immediate independence, as if this was a revelation ignored by "those who want to blame anyone but the East Timorese for that society's evident problems".

Yet this lack of preparation was publicly acknowledged by the Timorese leadership.

In 1998, resistance leader Xanana Gusmao urged Jakarta to give his country five to 10 years transition before any referendum. In January 1999, when he announced just such a referendum, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie gave them eight months.

It is part of the Timorese tragedy that they've had to play the cards they were dealt. In 1975, they were abandoned by Portugal and faced the inevitability of invasion, hence the declaration of independence. In 1999, Habibie offered them one chance of winning their freedom, take it or leave it.

In the process they saw their country destroyed by a humiliated Indonesian army that left nothing but ruins behind. A departing soldier's farewell message, scrawled in graffiti, declared: "A free East Timor will eat stones."

The causes of the current disaster in Dili are complex, multiple and messy. East Timor's best leaders, Gusmao and Ramos Horta, appear mesmerised and impotent, caught in currents of intrigue they can't identify or control. But it's too easy to simply attribute the disaster, as some of the commentary implies, to the squabbling of troublesome tribes.

Building a nation from ruins is not easy. The 20th century is littered with examples of post-colonial chaos in nations that won independence through armed struggle. Many leaders who have led guerilla movements, or endured the frustrations and disappointments of exile politics, are unable to make the transition to running open democratic governments with all the compromises that involves.

In East Timor's case, this is a society where all political aspirations and practice were suppressed, first by the Portuguese and then the Indonesians, who further sought to erase the people's national identity.

Look closely and you see a society suffering collective post- traumatic stress. A study published in The Lancet in 2000, based on a survey of 1033 East Timorese households, found 97 per cent had experienced at least one traumatic event during Indonesia's occupation. Three-quarters had experienced combat and more than half had come close to death. Twelve per cent had lost children to political violence; 39 per cent had been tortured; 22 per cent had witnessed the murder of relatives or friends. One third were classified as having post-traumatic stress. Little wonder that 20 per cent believed they would never recover.

The events in Dili show a society struggling to emerge from centuries of neglect under Portugal and 24 years of enforced fear and suspicion under Indonesia. The tactics of plotting, secrecy and scheming that have now come to a head have their roots in a regime where secrecy meant survival. Indonesia sought to defeat the clandestine independence movement through a pervasive system of spies and informers, where rumours and misinformation were weapons of war, where no one was trusted. This left a legacy of distrust. "The pervasiveness of the system," according to the CAVR report, "sowed deep suspicion among the East Timorese population, and social bonds and cohesiveness were casualties of this undercover element of the conflict."

Maybe the gangs looting Dili, and the politicians now accused of plotting the deaths of their rivals, learnt another lesson from the Indonesian experience. Jakarta's failure, with the connivance of the international community, to punish those who carried out the destruction of 1999 shows the triumph of a culture of impunity, where it's possible to get away with murder and where justice is dispensable.

To state that East Timor's leaders inherited a devastated ruin on which to build a nation, and to recognise that theirs is a society deeply traumatised by a brutal occupation, is not to excuse their massive failures. Rather, it's an attempt to understand the background to those failures.

Nor does any of this deny the deep divisions between those leaders, who have to accept ultimate responsibility for the mess that has erupted in Dili. Their failures have been multiple – especially the failure to act on the security crisis stemming from disaffection within the army and between the army and the police – and possibly criminal, if it emerges politicians are behind the violence, looting and arson.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was right when he declared last week: "Let us not walk away from the fact that the East Timorese themselves are responsible for what has happened in East Timor. No one else is." He's also right – up to a point – when he argues neither Australia nor the United Nations are to blame. But you can't have it both ways, in claiming credit when things go right in East Timor – as Canberra and the UN have in the past – and then denying any responsibility when things go wrong.

In March this year, referring to Australia's casualty-free role in ensuring East Timor's independence in 1999, Prime Minister John Howard said: "It all turned out fantastically, didn't it?"

East Timor's shaky foundations need long-term support

South China Morning Post - June 10, 2006

Annemarie Evans – Australian armoured vehicles patrol the streets of East Timor's capital, Dili, amid the burned-out shells of houses and food warehouses looted by marauding gangs, who for weeks have laid waste to neighbourhoods and forced tens of thousands of terrified civilians into refugee camps. What was lauded as the United Nations success story in nation-building has become a lawless territory.

But what has caused East Timor to disintegrate and what hope is there for this tiny country's future? "I think a big mistake made by the Australians and the UN was not recognising how far East Timor had to go," said nation-building expert Seth Jones, of the Rand Corporation, a US think-tank.

When the interim administration, the UN Transitional Administration for East Timor, left in 2002 after elections were held, it was replaced by the UN Mission of Support in East Timor. The UN and Australian presence was gradually wound down.

East Timor's Foreign Minister and recently appointed Defence Minister Jose Ramos Horta said yesterday that UN involvement with East Timor should last for at least a decade from 2002, and that if the international community believed in nation-building then there could be no cost-cutting.

But so far, the UN has only committed for a further two years during which the organisation will provide an international police force. UN envoy to East Timor Ian Martin spoke to both East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao and embattled Prime Minister Mari Alkitiri in Dili last week before flying to New York to brief the UN.

Mr Jones agreed with Mr Ramos Horta on the need for a decade-long commitment. "East Timor needs the same time-frame as Bosnia and Kosovo, where an international presence has been for at least the past 10 years," he said. "What East Timor needs most is international assistance provided over a long time. These steps include training the police, providing a judicial system, basic health, basic law, and reconstruction."

Mr Jones and John M. Miller, the national coordinator of the Washington-based East Timor and Indonesia Action Network, agreed that police training by the UN and Australia was inadequate, partly leading to the current unrest.

Dili-based human rights lawyer Aderito de Jesus Soares also said nation-building efforts were insufficient. "I think the UN pulled out too early," he said. "It failed to establish a strong, democratic foundation, especially in dealing with the defence force and police."

After the referendum in 1999, when East Timor's population voted to break away from Indonesia, many of the police officers had been working towards Indonesian integration. They soon returned to Indonesia or simply melted away, leaving a security vacuum.

East Timor's problems partly stemmed from the senior leaders of the armed forces being chosen from the east of the country, while lower ranks came from the west, sparking claims of discrimination.

But to class the current unrest as an east-west divide was an over-simplification, according to Mr Miller and Manuel Jaime Ximenes, a Sydney-based East Timorese and former member of the National Council of East Timorese Resistance.

"There is more than just a problem with discrimination," said Mr Ximenes. "As a people we're based on traditional values of kinships. Previously we had different areas with different rulers."

But this broke down under the Indonesian occupation. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were displaced, with many moving to other people's houses and other people's land. Many of these land- rights issues still needed to be resolved, said Mr Ximenes.

Mr Miller said that much of what had been going on in recent days was a result of poverty. "It's clear to us that the later phases of violence have been fuelled by poverty; gangs of unemployed young men with nothing else to do." He said this was partly due to the dysfunctional justice system. "This fuels a lot of tit-for-tat violence," he said. "The issue of justice is extremely important."

Mr Ximenes and Mr Soares also pointed the finger at the administration. "There's been a failure in the past four years by this government to communicate with the people," said Mr Soares.

Mr Ximenes said the personal differences between the three main leaders – Mr Gusmao, Mr Ramos Horta and Mr Alkitiri – were also a factor. Although the going had got tough, it was not possible to oust Mr Alkitiri, said Mr Ximenes. Mr Alkitiri is seen as unpopular next to the charismatic Mr Gusmao, but Mr Alkitiri heads Fretilin, and there's a danger of alienating the party, sparking more unrest.

Mr Jones put East Timor on a footing with Afghanistan. While East Timor had no insurgency problems, it was on the same level with its justice system, health, education and other indicators.

East Timor's oil and gas reserves will help the country in the long term. Higher oil prices have helped, but other projects will take years to show profit. So, to quell the simmering tensions and violence, East Timor still must look to its neighbours. "As with most of these operations, the most important countries are the donor states in the geographical area near these states," said Mr Jones. "So, in the case of East Timor, that would be Australia and possibly New Zealand."

Australia is overstretched with Iraq, Solomon Islands and other operations. But Australia, with US backing, is keen to have influence as China eyes East Timor's energy supplies for its booming economy.

If East Timor is left to its own devices, then with the current unrest, the future doesn't look rosy. However, both Mr Miller and Mr Jones are optimistic, provided an international taskforce can guide East Timor through a few more years.

East Timor deserves not only peace, but justice

The Capital Times - June 6, 2006

Diane Farsetta – Is the Southeast Asian island nation of East Timor a success story or a basket case?

The former view has been promoted by the United Nations, which headed a transitional government there from 1999 to 2002, and by donor governments and international financial institutions, which spent millions on foreign consultants to Timorese officials. The latter view is suggested by recent media accounts, which have decontextualized, and at times exaggerated, the current unrest in East Timor's capital city, Dili.

While it will take careful investigations and judicial processes to fully understand and address the situation, two things are clear: What is happening in East Timor is truly tragic, and truly complex.

To summarize briefly, what began as a strike and protest by members of the Timorese military in February and March escalated into clashes in Dili that started in April and are still continuing. Twenty-five to 30 people have been killed, including children. Gunfire, house burnings and other attacks led tens of thousands of terrified people to take refuge in churchyards and in the hills surrounding Dili, as was common during the 24-year Indonesian occupation.

The 4-year-old Timorese government requested, and received, military and police contingents from neighboring countries, in an attempt to end the violence.

If there is one place in the world that deserves peace, it's East Timor. The Timorese have endured a series of often-brutal foreign occupations by the Portuguese, Japanese and Indonesians. Indonesia illegally claimed East Timor as its own province from 1975 to 1999.

Mindful of Indonesia's economic and geopolitical importance, the United States, Britain and Australia provided military and political assistance for the occupation, which claimed the lives of some 200,000 East Timorese.

As a UN-accredited observer of East Timor's 1999 referendum on independence, I saw the bravery of Timorese who organized peacefully for an end to the Indonesian occupation – and paid a price.

In the southern town of Suai, Father Hilario Madeira held peace forums in the weeks before the referendum. Two days after the resounding win for independence was announced, he was killed, shot by Indonesian military officers as he sought to protect the people taking refuge in his churchyard.

As a participant in delegations to Madison's sister city of Ainaro in 2002 and 2005, I've been inspired by Timorese friends who, despite scarce resources and challenging conditions, are working to realize a better future.

Elvis Ferreira leads workshops that help people rebuild their own houses. Leonia de Araujo is part of a weaving cooperative that provides a modest income to women who often have no other way to pay for their children's school or health care. Angelino da Silva works with a small band of committed volunteers to keep Ainaro's community radio station on the air.

But these grass-roots projects can only do so much. As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. cautioned, "True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

Unfortunately, the international community has not supported justice for East Timor. This stance not only disrespects the Timorese people's tremendous past sacrifices and current struggles, it also helped create the conditions under which the recent unrest spiraled out of control.

If the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank would make economic justice a priority, there wouldn't be gangs in Dili of unemployed youths, who quickly joined the violence and looting.

If the United States would support an international tribunal for East Timor, instead of allowing war crimes and crimes against humanity to go unpunished, even rogue elements of Timorese society would have greater respect for the rule of law.

If the US, Britain and Australia would pay war reparations – as called for by East Timor's Commission for Truth, Reception and Reconciliation – there would be more funds for reconstruction.

The same would be true if Australia would stop stealing the oil reserves off East Timor's south coast, which belong to East Timor under international law.

Hopefully, peace will soon return to Dili's streets. Then the broader campaign for justice must resume, with international solidarity groups actively supporting Timorese demands.

[Diane Farsetta is the coordinator of the Madison-Ainaro Sister City Alliance.]

Imperial hypocrisy and manipulation in East Timor crisis

Green Left Weekly - June 7, 2006

Peter Boyle – Commenting on the Australian troop deployment to East Timor on May 31, the Australian's Paul Kelly said, "this intervention is both military and political. Its primary purpose was to respond to East Timor's security crisis... But this is not just a military intervention. It is a highly political intervention... It transcends the domain of law and order and penetrates to East Timor's political crisis. In this sense Australia is operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security and political outcomes.

"This language is unpalatable to many. Yet it is the reality. It is new experimental territory for Australia. We are evolving as a regional power and discovering the risks and dividends in the exercise of that power. We have taken complete charge of law and order in East Timor and its domestic power struggle is conducted against the backdrop of our unstated pressure."

Is this imperialist fantasy or the "unpalatable" truth?

It is a fact that the 2000-plus Australian, New Zealand, Portugese and Malaysian "peace-keeping" force is there at the formal invitation of the government of Timor-Leste. The May 24 invitation was signed by PM Mari Alkatiri, President Xanana Gusmao and the speaker of the parliament, Francisco Guterres Lu'Olo.

There are reports claiming that in earlier discussions in the East Timorese cabinet, the prime minister may have argued against suggestions of an earlier invitation for foreign military intervention, but by May 24 it appears there was agreement.

Two weeks before the invitation, the Australian government had readied significant military forces, and had been having discussions with the East Timorese government about a possible invitation. The Australian military presence off the coast of East Timor during the ruling Fretilin party's congress, on May 17-19, exerted political pressure on Alkatiri, and may have encouraged actions by various forces that sharpened what was already a serious fracturing of the army and police.

At present there appears to be support from across the political spectrum in East Timor for a foreign peacekeeper intervention. While this is understandable because of the threat of a fratricidal civil war between factions of the country's armed forces (the leaders of which are mostly former national liberation movement fighters), this is not a situation like in 1999 when the international solidarity movement wholeheartedly campaigned for military intervention against the militia massacres being organised by the occupying Indonesian military.

As the US-based East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) said on May 27, "The intervention by foreign military and police forces is a sad event for Timor-Leste, whose hard-won political independence has had to be laid aside – we hope for only a short time – because leaders and state institutions have been unable to manage certain violent elements of the population and security forces.

"Now that foreign forces are being deployed... we hope that they serve their intended purpose in quelling the violence and allowing negotiations and a peaceful resolution, as well as the identification and arrest of those who have committed crimes. Outside intervention is a temporary solution at best. Timor-Leste must find ways, with respectful support from the international community, to deal with problems in a manner that will not require troops.

"Statements by Australian government leaders that providing security assistance entitles them to influence over Timor-Leste's government are undemocratic, paternalistic, and unhelpful. Who governs Timor-Leste is a decision to be made by its people within its constitution."

The political attacks on the Fretilin government by Australian PM John Howard has put many long-time solidarity activists on alert against imperialist manipulation of the conflict in the armed forces and leadership of the Timorese government. The blatant attempts by East Timorese foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta and Gusmao to blame the crisis on Alkatiri, while presenting themselves as a more Canberra-friendly alternative, have added to this alarm.

Tim O'Connor, director of AID/WATCH (which critically monitors Australia's aid programs) has warned against Canberra's meddling. "Australia's focus in Timor must be to protect the democratic rights of the East Timorese people. International armed forces from Australia and other invited nations are there as peacekeepers. The neutrality required in this role must not be undermined by political point-scoring, such as we have seen in recent days by John Howard and Alexander Downer."

The Howard government's attempt to blame the current crisis solely on the Fretilin government is hypocritical, as it is an expression of the failure of a bureaucratic state-building project carried out under the strict supervision of the United Nations Transitional East Timor Authority with considerable Australian involvement.

After seven years of best-practice United Nations/International Monetary Fund/World Bank capitalist state building, 40% of the population is on an average income of below 55 cents a day, 70% are struggling to survive through subsistence agriculture and most youth in the capital Dili are unemployed.

The East Timorese leadership including Gusmao, Ramos Horta and Alkatiri went along with this, consciously demobilising the national liberation movement in the process. The Fretilin leadership and a thin layer of their political supporters were given jobs in the civil and military service of the new bureaucratic state apparatus, the rest were forced to fend for themselves.

The international advisers who came and went with their four- wheel drives left behind this startling advice for the poorest nation in Asia: average wage levels – for the few East Timorese who are wage-earners – need to be lowered to the level of neighbouring Indonesia. International aid began tapering off sharply after 2001, while actual oil revenue is still just a trickle. So far, East Timor has accumulated about US$500 million in its petroleum fund, but has a potential revenue of US$15-25 billion from oil and gas resources over the next 20 years.

It is no surprise that there's a crisis in East Timor today. It's also hardly surprising that in the midst of this, Australian imperialism has launched a campaign to get a more compliant government in place.

According to Tim Anderson, a solidarity activist and academic, a destabilisation campaign accompanied several important disputes between the Timorese government and global business interests. "The dispute over oil and gas is well known. Mari Alkatiri had the support of all parties [in East Timor] in driving a hard line with the Howard government. Many believe the Timorese were still robbed by a deal Howard continues to call 'generous'.

"Less well known are the disputes over agriculture, where Australia and the World Bank refused to help rehabilitate and build the Timorese rice industry, and refused to support use of aid money for grain silos. Under Alkatiri, the Timorese have reduced their rice import dependence from two-thirds to one-third of domestic consumption.

"After independence an expensive phone service, run by Telstra, was replaced by a government joint venture with a Portuguese company. And following a popular campaign, Timor Leste remains one of the few 'debt-free' poor countries. Alkatiri's consideration here, as economic manager, was to retain some control over the country's budget, and the building of public institutions.

"In 2005, there was a Church-led dispute over the apparent relegation of religious education to 'voluntary' status in schools. The dispute was resolved, but not before it had become the focus of an open campaign to remove Alkatiri, who was branded a communist." During this dispute some East Timorese were alarmed to see that the US Embassy (and possibly also Australia) providing material support (such as portable toilets) to the demonstrators, effectively backing an opposition movement.

"Over 2004-06, the Alkatiri government secured the services of dozens of Cuban doctors, and several hundred young Timorese students are now in Cuba, studying medicine free of charge. No- one criticises this valuable assistance, but the US does all it can to undermine Cuban policy.

"It is worth remembering that the suggested 'communist' politics of Fretilin in 1975 was a major reason for US support for the Indonesian invasion and occupation. Australia followed suit. Today the 'communist' tag is again used by [rebel army leader Alfredo Alves] Reinado to target the Fretilin government."

Anderson warns that while the "current intervention may be necessary, if it has been legitimately called for by the East Timorese government", it is also "a great danger for the country's democracy. Australian people, who strongly supported independence for the people of Timor Leste, should watch Howard's latest intervention very closely."

Challenges in resolving the East Timor crisis

Green Left Weekly - June 7, 2006

Jon Lamb – While the fighting between different factions of the East Timor Defence Force (FDTL) and the East Timor National Police (PNTL) has ceased with the arrival of the Australian-led international security force, sporadic street skirmishes and violence by unruly gangs continue. The uneasy situation has been further complicated by ongoing tensions within the East Timorese political elite over who is responsible for the crisis and how it should be resolved.

Shortly after the May 25 arrival of the first contingent of Australian troops, along with New Zealand and Malaysian soldiers, loyalist soldiers in the FDTL agreed to return to their barracks. The rebel factions of the FDTL also accepted cantonment and cessation of hostilities. The fractured PNTL was effectively disarmed and demobilised, though detachments gradually returned to their posts, with some PNTL officers also assisting Australian troops with security activities.

A two-day session of the Council of State, a body comprising government representatives, including Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and President Xanana Gusmao, and leaders of various political parties, non-government organisations and the church, convened on May 29 to discuss the crisis and the next course of action to resolve the situation. While the deliberations of this body remain largely secret, much of the meeting is believed to have centred on the differences between Gusmao and Alkatiri and assessing the factional breakdown in the FDTL and how to stop the street-gang violence.

Much of the Australian and international media commentary has played up the outcome of the deliberations and speculated that Gusmao, with the backing of foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta, would force Alkatiri to step down as prime minister. After the meeting, Gusmao confirmed that the council had declared a "grave crisis" and conferred constitutional powers to him over the FDTL and PNTL.

A presidential statement released on May 30 called for rebel groups and gangs to disarm and to refrain from violence. It also stated that the president "assumes the main responsibility in the areas of defence and national security, in his capacity as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces" and "that the National Parliament shall meet, as soon as possible, to discuss and follow-up on the ongoing crisis". Under the constitution, only the parliament can declare a state of emergency.

The exertion of Gusmao's authority and control over the army and police, however, has been largely symbolic, as actual control remains in the hands of the Australian-led security force. The head of this force, Brigadier Michael Slater, confirmed that he was still consulting with both Gusmao and Alkatiri on security matters.

Prior to the Council of State meeting, Alkatiri, who is head of the ruling Fretilin party, asserted that there was a coup attempt against him and that the rebel army groupings are part of a move to unseat him and dissolve the government. He and other Fretilin leaders who have made these claims have not openly stated which political forces they believe are involved in this attempt or whom they believe to be backing rebel officers such as Major Alfredo Reinado. Reinado has been increasingly vocal in calling Alkatiri a "criminal" and a "communist", blaming him for the crisis and demanding that he step down.

Reinado, who has risen to elevated prominence in the Australian media, has stated that he and his grouping continue to pledge allegiance to Gusmao and do not recognise Alkatiri as prime minister. In an interview with Lusa news service on June 1, Reinado claimed he had assumed command of "all [dissident] military forces in the mountains" around Dili, and that these rebel forces would "stay in the mountains" until "the crimes of April 28" – when protesting, sacked soldiers were fired upon by police – had been clarified and resolved. However the extent of forces under Reinado's control is not clear, beyond an immediate grouping of around 25 well-armed military police. Horta indicated on ABC radio on June 2 that he was involved in discussions with a range of other officers representing the rebels, including the group of nearly 600 sacked soldiers.

Gusmao and Horta are widely viewed as arch-opponents of Alkatiri, though they have stopped short of openly calling for him to resign. Such a call would be likely to seriously inflame the situation and provoke demonstrations and mobilisations by pro- government Fretilin members and supporters. The limited effect of Gusmao's and Horta's direct appeals to rioting youths and looters when the violence was at its peak also reflected some hostility their own roles in the crisis. Alkatiri pledged to mobilise the Fretilin base if a move was made against him, claiming he could bring 100,000 people out onto the streets. Fretilin is the only political party with a consolidated national spread across East Timor, relying heavily on its traditional legacy as the main party that led the independence struggle, so it could potentially muster a significant social base.

In what appears to have been a compromise and an attempt to break the stalemate within the political elite, central Fretilin leaders Rogerio Lobato and Roque Rodrigues agreed on June 1 to step down as interior minister and minister of defence respectively, stating that they accepted responsibility for the events that led to the political crisis and violence.

Alkatiri announced he was replacing Rodrigues with Horta and Lobato with deputy internal administration minister Alcino Barris. Speaking to ABC radio the following day, Horta said that while "many people in the country want the prime minister to resign... we should move one step at a time". He said that it was a time to consolidate and negotiate and to exercise "prudence and caution".

While the gang violence has gradually eased, the situation remains volatile and the Australian government has hinted that it will keep a troop presence in East Timor for an undisclosed period of time. Defence minister Brendan Nelson stated on May 30: "In the political, financial, legal and social reconstruction of East Timor over the near and longer term, we are of the view that the security arrangements essentially be with the East Timorese government involving a coalition of countries, led perhaps by Australia."

Portugal, which is the single largest contributor of foreign aid to East Timor, sent the first detachment of Portuguese security forces on June 1 – some 120 members of the elite paramilitary Republican National Guard (GNR). Lusa reported on June 1 that Portuguese foreign ministry spokesperson Antonio Carneiro Jacinto had stated that the paramilitaries would remain under autonomous command, depending on the East Timorese prime minister and president. According to internal administration minister Antonio Costa, the GNR presence is a long-term mission that would also include helping to rebuild East Timor's army and police.

There are also grave concerns that the violence has sparked a humanitarian crisis that could deepen unless large amounts of food, water and other aid is circulated quickly to the camps where internally displaced people have gathered.

The Inter-Agency Humanitarian Assistance Group estimated that by May 31, at least 70,000 internally displaced people were sheltering in official and makeshift camps across Dili. At least 30,000 others are believed to have also left Dili for the safety of villages and camps in surrounding districts. ABC correspondent Peter Cave stated on June 2 that as many as 15,000 refugees were camped at the Dom Bosco Catholic centre in Dili, with limited supplies of food and water. Cuban doctors were treating children and others for diarrhoea and dehydration.

United Nations Office In East Timor (UNOTIL) chief Sukehiro Hasegawa also formally requested on May 29 that as a step towards restoring calm the East Timorese government investigate as soon as possible the May 25 killings by FDTL troops of 12 unarmed PNTL officers under UN escort.

Lobato told Lusa on June 1 that "this incident would not have happened if the commander-general of police [Superintendent Paulo Martins] had been here and in coordination with the armed forces command". The whereabouts of Martins is unknown and it is believed he is with one of the rebel groups outside of Dili.

Neighbour, not domain

Sydney Morning Herald Editorial - June 6, 2006

The unfortunate thing about overseas is that it is full of foreigners, and they have different traditions from us. That seems to be the gist of some lamentations here about the state of East Timor.

The conclusion some are drawing is that Australia has to keep full-time garrisons in the "arc of instability" around our shores. In Timor it will have to fight off efforts by the dastardly Portuguese to restore their absurd cultural influence.

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, fortunately had some sensible things to say after his quick weekend visit to Timor. One is that Australia cannot rule its neighbours and needs other partners in a new United Nations program to build up Timor's institutions. Another is that it may not be a good idea to demand the head of East Timor's Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, as a claque of commentators are doing.

Mr Alkatiri after all leads the majority party in an elected parliament. He and the rest of the parliament face elections next April. He is clearly not the most liked politician in East Timor, and Mr Downer may not much like him either after bruising negotiations on offshore oil. He carries a lot of the responsibility for the army split that started this crisis. If he had offered to step aside earlier, as we suggested, that would have been a gracious gesture that might have calmed things more quickly.

Now it would look like submitting to blackmail by a renegade officer, Major Alfredo Reinado, who walked out with some of the military policemen he commanded and a lot of weapons and put himself at the forefront of the army rebels.

His grievance is an alleged order by Mr Alkatiri for troops to open fire on rioters in Dili on April 28, causing six deaths. Whether Mr Alkatiri gave such an order is unclear, however. Perhaps nobody did. The later massacre of disarmed policemen while they were under the charge of a United Nations official suggests fire control is weak.

All these incidents should be investigated fully. Meanwhile, shoring up East Timor's political institutions is more a priority than scoring points against particular leaders, none of whom emerge with much credit so far, except the Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta. The Portuguese, latterly trying to make up for their ignoble exit in 1975, can hardly be blamed for their interest. Their culture is a plus for a small country that needs tourism to create jobs, and it opens windows to a wider world.