by John Howard
The meeting agreed that I should write to Habibie urging direct negotiations with the East Timorese leadership and, importantly, the addition of a review mechanism to the autonomy package, so that at some time into the future the East Timorese could have an act of self-determination. Alexander Downer, as the meeting ended, leaned towards me and said, ‘Prime Minister, this is really big.’ So it was. For the first time in a generation, an Australian Government was proposing to reverse a longstanding, essentially bipartisan approach whereby East Timor’s status was subservient to good relations between Canberra and Jakarta.
The terms of the letter were settled in discussions between me and the Foreign Minister. The key paragraph read, ‘… a decisive element of East Timorese opinion is insisting on an act of self-determination. If anything their position — with a fair degree of international support — seems to be strengthening on this’.3
To our great surprise, Habibie’s response was to go much further than the letter had suggested. After a lengthy and momentous Indonesian cabinet meeting, Habibie announced on 27 January 1999 that Indonesia would offer the people of East Timor a clear choice between limited autonomy as part of Indonesia or immediate independence. This rocked the Indonesian military, and much of his country’s foreign policy establishment. Habibie had disconcerted many in Indonesia, as well as elsewhere, with his more radical thinking. They found it very hard to accept that an Indonesian president would do anything other than maintain a total commitment to Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.
Australia welcomed the Indonesian response. What Habibie had chosen to do accelerated the process we had sought, but the end result was what we wanted. The people of East Timor were to be given an act of self-determination.
The proposal was taken through the tripartite mincer, and on 5 May formal agreements were announced. The UN-supervised ballot was to take place on 30 August 1999.
There were divided views within Indonesia about the future of East Timor. The militia in East Timor received an increasingly free run. Sections of TNI, the Indonesian Army, turned a blind eye to their activities, with reports continuing to come through about militia violence and the apparent unwillingness of the Indonesian military to do anything to restrain it. Some of those reports claimed that elements of TNI itself were involved.
The possibility of Australian military involvement in East Timor, in some form or other, had been discussed on several occasions at the NSC. On 11 March, the NSC ordered that the 1st Brigade, based in Darwin, be brought to a state of readiness by June. This proved a prescient decision, as the unit helped form the nucleus of the very large task force that was sent to East Timor later the same year.
April saw a sharp increase in violence. In Liquica on 6 April, a pro-integration militia group attacked civilians in a churchyard. Violence continued for days. There were conflicting reports regarding the number killed and injured, but little doubt that TNI had, at the very least, stood by and allowed attacks by the militia. A complication was that the heavy Indonesian military presence in East Timor had always operated at two levels. There were the troops acting under the direct command of Jakarta and the locally raised units of the Indonesian Army and the militia. These latter two groups were often blurred. Indeed, the whole problem for months would be that the central government in Jakarta, through its local TNI operation, by a combination of deliberate indifference and, occasionally, active encouragement, allowed a situation to develop where law and order broke down.
Later in April there were more attacks, this time in Dili, with estimates of the death toll moving between 12 and 28. The escalation in violence caused me to telephone Habibie on 19 April to express my concern and remonstrate about the permissive behaviour of TNI. I suggested that we meet as soon as possible to discuss the situation.
Our meeting in Bali on 27 April would prove crucial to events leading to the separation of East Timor from Indonesia. For an hour and a half we talked alone, without any advisors or note takers. This was the key part of the Bali meeting. Habibie spoke excellent English and prided himself on being able to go through a negotiation of this length with someone whose mother tongue was English.
Habibie was deeply committed to the referendum process in East Timor. He had a contemporary view about the significance of East Timor to Indonesia, and conveyed to me that he would not regard it as a cardinal tragedy if the province were to separate from the republic.
I raised the possibility of peacekeepers going into East Timor before the referendum was held. This produced a metaphorical explosion from Habibie. There was no way that he or the Indonesian Government would support such a move. He said his position would be absolutely untenable in Jakarta if he were to agree to this. He took a more conciliatory approach to the provision of additional police, as these would be provided to the United Nations organisation and would clearly be seen as acting under UN authority. Still he was even reluctant about having more police.
After this meeting we rejoined our colleagues and had a brief and more formal meeting where it was agreed that an adequate number of police officers as advisors would be required, consistent with the agreement regarding security to be signed with the United Nations. That meant more police, which was what Australia wanted, given that Habibie would not agree to peacekeepers going in before the ballot. I came away from this meeting believing that Habibie himself had reached a realistic and pragmatic position about East Timor. He had to pay regard to sentiment within his own country, but he was plainly of the view that there was a limit to how much national effort from Indonesia should be invested in keeping East Timor.
The security situation in East Timor continued to trouble me. After the Bali meeting I wrote to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, reporting the gist of what had been discussed. I told him that Habibie would accept a UN decision to have more police, and suggested that he press strongly for up to 300 police in the UN mission. I offered substantial additional Australian police and, as well, an Australian to command the force. This post was filled ultimately by Allan Mills of the AFP, who did an outstanding job, especially during the tense and difficult days following the ballot.
Reports of militia violence continued, often accompanied by evidence of TNI indifference. Habibie would not have a bar of peacekeepers, but Australia took every opportunity to maintain pressure on Indonesia concerning security issues. When Lieutenant General Des Mueller, then Vice-chief of the ADF, visited his counterpart in Jakarta in June 1999, he underlined the concerns of both the ADF and the Government regarding the activities of the militia and the responsibilities of TNI. Likewise in July, I wrote again to Habibie and registered my concern about an attack, obviously involving militia, near Maliana in East Timor.
As I told the House of Representatives on 21 September 1999, I kept pursuing the possibility of peacekeepers being accepted. On 29 August, the day before the ballot took place, I rang Dr Habibie and discussed the general situation in East Timor and sought assurances about the safety of Australian personnel following the ballot. I again raised the possibility of international peacekeepers going in. His response was they would not be acceptable until after the transition to independence had taken place, if in fact that was what the East Timorese voted for. I rang him again only a few days later, and his attitude remained the same. Due to the deteriorating security situation in East Timor, I rang the President yet again on 6 September. He told me that he would declare martial law and that if that did not calm the situation in East Timor he would consider inviting in an international force. That is what transpired.
I told the house that, in the light of all this, those who claimed that peacekeepers could have been inserted before the ballot were out of touch with reality.
The UN-supervised referendum took place on 30 August 1999 and resulted in overwhelming support for the separation of East Timor from the Indonesian republic. The vote was 78.5 per cent in favour of full independence. This was entirely predictable, and the challenge immediately upon us w
as how to handle the militia-inspired eruptions that would follow the announcement of the referendum’s result, to occur on 4 September.
I had realised that if the vote went in favour of complete separation, then an international force would be needed to help keep the peace and lay the groundwork for transition to independence. I also knew that Australia would not only be expected to, but should, in my view, play a major role in that peacekeeping operation. I was determined that Australia should lead the operation.
Events moved very quickly after the ballot result was announced. There was increased violence and plenty of evidence that the militia were running amok. The United Nations had established a mission in East Timor under the leadership of an Englishman, Ian Martin. It was known as UNAMET, and its main remit had been to supervise the ballot. That it had done very well. Angered by rejection of integration, pro-Indonesian forces began harassing UN personnel.
As the situation went from bad to worse, on 5 September Martin asked Australia to help relocate 200–300 non-essential UNAMET staff to Darwin. Between 6 and 14 September, 2600 people, including 1900 East Timorese, had been shifted, overwhelmingly by Australia.
Another senior UN mission was despatched to Dili and Jakarta, to investigate the situation on the ground. Its findings were damning of Indonesia. It reported that the violence could not have occurred without ‘the involvement of large elements of the Indonesian military and police’.4 The mission said that the imposition of martial law, which Habibie had sponsored as a response to the post-ballot violence, had failed.
I had already spoken to the UN head, Kofi Annan, regarding the willingness of Australia to involve herself in a peacekeeping operation, should that become necessary. I made it plain that Australia would make a substantial contribution, but wanted it understood from the very beginning that Australia expected to lead the operation. There was no way I was going to support an outcome whereby Australia provided most of the grunt, but command was given to someone from another country which itself had contributed few troops. I was quite direct with the Secretary-General on this point.
I was impressed with Annan in my dealings with him over East Timor. He was professional, candid and fully understood my own domestic political realities. As is well known, I am not an uncritical admirer of the United Nations and, on some major issues, such as Iraq, the Secretary-General and his colleagues would have totally disagreed with the approach that I took. On East Timor, however, we worked together and achieved the right outcome.
In a telephone call on 6 September, Annan formally asked me if Australia would be willing to lead an international force in East Timor. I said yes. I indicated that we could provide 2000 troops ready for deployment with 48 to 72 hours notice, and also promised that I would pursue contributions from other countries. For the next week to 10 days I lived on the phone in pursuit of both diplomatic and potential military assistance.
Whilst I was quite willing to see Australia contribute heavily to the operation, I wanted the Americans involved. It was an instinctive reaction. US involvement would send an implicit but clear deterrent signal to any in Jakarta who might have considered resisting the intervention force. Whenever the Americans had been involved in a major operation, they had always turned to Australia seeking a contribution. We had been willing to make it. It was this that I had in mind when I first spoke to Bill Clinton about the matter, also on 6 September.
Clinton was sympathetic and offered plenty of logistic and other help, but it took me back a lot when he said that America would not be able to provide any troops, or ‘boots on the ground’ as it was depicted at the time. He really stunned me when he spelled out, in some detail, just how stretched the American military had become. His explanation made it clear that after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet communism, resources had been taken out of Defence, and the previously unquestioned capacity of the United States to provide men and materiel whenever and wherever sought was no longer there.
Over the next few days it was obvious that our disappointed reaction had had an effect on the Americans. Alexander Downer was interviewed on CNN and expressed unhappiness with the US response. On seeing the interview Madeleine Albright telephoned Downer to complain about his tone. Downer’s response was to remind Albright that whenever the Americans asked for help, Australia was there, and now, on the one occasion that the boot was on the other foot, we felt a little put out that the Americans would not reciprocate.
The insertion of peacekeepers into East Timor still remained a hugely sensitive and difficult issue. The people of East Timor may have voted for independence, but until that was formally agreed to by the relevant processes in Indonesia, the province remained part of the Indonesian republic. Therefore, peacekeepers, even under a UN flag, could not enter East Timor without Indonesia’s prior approval. Indonesian national pride was acutely involved.
Many people in Jakarta had never accepted the wisdom of Habibie’s initial acquiescence in the vote by the East Timorese, and he was subjected to a great deal of cross-pressuring in the days following the ballot. Added to this were the suspicions amongst some in the Indonesian power elite about Australia’s role. Although the President himself was well disposed towards Australia, the same could not be said for other leading figures in Indonesian politics. In the post-ballot period, I had maintained periodic communications with Habibie, but the situation was becoming increasingly difficult for him.
My reaction in our telephone discussion, and Downer’s exchange with Albright, had had an effect on Bill Clinton. Both of us were due at the imminent APEC Leaders meeting in Auckland, and on his way to that meeting, he telephoned me from Hawaii to say that the United States would provide extensive logistic and intelligence support, the necessary transport or ‘lift’ for any peacekeepers and, importantly, intensify diplomatic pressure on Indonesia to accept a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping operation. This last-mentioned commitment was most important, and played a significant role in finally shifting the Indonesians.
Part of this pressure was a visit to Jakarta by William Cohen, the US Defense Secretary. He warned the Indonesians against allowing conflict to break out between TNI and any UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force. Cohen also hinted that American forces were available to provide backup, if needed.
When President Clinton and I met in Auckland on 11 September, it was clear that we were singing from the same hymn sheet. He understood that we had been disappointed with his reluctance to provide any US soldiers for the peacekeeping operation. He knew, however, that the United States could compensate for that by an all-out diplomatic effort in support of what Australia wanted, and that was Indonesian acceptance of a UN-sanctioned intervention led by Australia.
My meeting with Clinton was very successful, as evident from the public comments that the two of us were working closely together. This particular meeting was another example of how the occasion of international meetings provides the opportunity for leaders to resolve issues in separate ‘corridor’ discussions, often quite unrelated to the formal agenda of the meeting.
It was also an example, which I was to see repeated on a number of occasions, of the willingness of US presidents, both Democrat and Republican, to take the advice of Australia when it came to matters affecting Indonesia. Many Australians make the mistake of seeing the Australian-American relationship in terms which always depict Australia as being subservient. That is wrong. America does not, for example, pretend to understand our part of the world, particularly Indonesia, all that well. On a number of occasions in later years, George W. Bush would listen to and act very deliberately on advice I offered regarding Indonesia. Bill Clinton had done that in 1999.
It all came together in Auckland. Habibie’s representative at the APEC meeting, Coordinating Minister for Economics Ginandjar, assured me that everything was moving in the right direction, and towards the finish Downer told me that he had spoken to his counterpart, Alatas, who had just left for New York to inform the UN Security Council that Indonesia wo
uld accept a peacekeeping operation in East Timor. Finally, late on 12 September, confirmation came from Habibie himself that Indonesia would accept a peacekeeping force.
Habibie’s decision was so important that I called a news conference in Auckland at 1 am on 13 September. I said, ‘Most importantly, this is a great step forward for the people of East Timor because it’s their welfare, their future, their safety, their freedom that this has been all about.’ I said that Habibie’s announcement had been consistent with what he had told me just on a week earlier, that if the calling of martial law did not stem the violence in East Timor, he would accept UN-sanctioned peacekeepers. Much hard work and many difficult negotiations lay ahead, but I felt a huge sense of relief. It was a monumental decision for Indonesia to have accepted a peacekeeping force.
Diplomatically, Australia had achieved a great deal. We had been there at the beginning, urging a change in Indonesian policy, and through all the difficulties of subsequent months I had maintained, almost to the very end, a clear channel of communication with President Habibie. Indonesia had accepted, finally, the international indignity of a UN-mandated peacekeeping force on its own territory. There was agreement for that intervention force in East Timor to be led by Australia, with forces from a number of Asian countries, and strong American support.
Meanwhile, domestic pressure was building in Australia for the Government to act immediately to help the East Timorese. To the Australian public the situation was simple. The people of East Timor had voted for independence, and in response the militia, with the tacit support of the Indonesian military, had gone on a rampage. Therefore, the Australian Government should forthwith send forces to East Timor to protect the people, with whom they deeply sympathised.