"East Timor risks becoming a failed state", Xanana Gusmao by David Fickling The Guardian 10:32am 20th Apr, 2004   April 28, 2004.    E Timor condemns Australia for theft in sea border dispute. (ABC News)    East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has accused Australia in an interview published Tuesday of robbing his impoverished nation of badly-needed oil and gas revenues from a disputed maritime area.    Mr Gusmao added in an interview with Portuguese newspaper Publico that Australia was acting in bad faith in talks to establish a permanent maritime boundary between the two nations in the oil-rich Timor Sea. "We are protesting loudly so the world will learn what is going on. This is not right. The country which steals from us then organises conferences regarding transparency [and] anti-corruption," he said.    "The bad faith [of the Australians] is such that when they realised we would bring the case to an international court, they got out of its jurisdiction. This is a shame," he added.    East Timor and Australia began talks last week to establish a permanent maritime boundary in the Timor Sea. Australia wants to keep the maritime border agreed with Jakarta after Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, which would give it the lion's share of reserves.    Dili argues that Jakarta only agreed to that deal in exchange for Canberra's recognition of its illegal annexation of East Timor and the border should lie at the mid-point between the two countries, in line with standard international practice.    In March 2002, Australia withdrew from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea before the dispute reached the arbiter in a move described by East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri at the time as "a hostile act".    East Timor became independent in 2002 and claims it is already losing $US1 million a day due to what it calls Australia's illegal exploitation of resources in a disputed area of the Greater Sunrise field.    Mr Gusmao said international donors were putting pressure on his Government to exploit the reserves which he said could end the fledgling nation's dependence on foreign aid.    Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer accused East Timor over the weekend of trying to stir up sympathy over its claims for a greater share of oil and gas revenues. "The tactic here is to try to create public controversy in Australia by a lot of emotive criticism of Australia," he said.    The Timor Sea is expected to generate an estimated $US22 billion in oil and gas deposits.    --AFP    Sydney. April 19, 2004 (The Guardian)    East Timor risks becoming "another Haiti" because of an attempt by Australia to exploit offshore oil and gas reserves between the two countries, according to its president, Xanana Gusmao.    Mr Gusmao, who led East Timor's fight for independence from Indonesia, said the country would be at risk if Australian plans to exploit oil and gas fields claimed by Dili went ahead.    "It makes the difference to our future," he said. "We would not like to be a failed state. Without all this we will be another Haiti, another Liberia, another Solomon Islands, and we do not want that," he told the Guardian.    An Australian Green party senator, Bob Brown, has accused Canberra of blackmail and robbery in its attempts to take control of two slices of the $30bn (£16.6bn) Timor Sea reserves, while demonstrators in Dili this week likened the claim to the 1975 Indonesian invasion of their country.    Mr Gusmao said the reserves could make the difference between viability and failure for East Timor. "How can we prevent poverty if we don't have money? How can we reduce disease, how can we stabilise the country, how can we strengthen the democratic process, how can we strengthen tolerance ... if we don't have money?" he asked.    The president said international donors, including Britain, were putting pressure on his government to exploit the reserves but had not offered any help in the dispute with Canberra.    With much of its infrastructure destroyed by violence that accompanied its 1999 independence referendum, East Timor is one of the poorest countries in the world. One in three people is dead by the age of 40, more than half of adults are illiterate, only one in three houses has electricity and one in five has drinking water.    The Timor Sea reserves, which lie in an area where the sea boundary between Australia and East Timor has never been settled, are its greatest hope for development.    Dili claims its long-term tax revenues from the area would rise from $4bn to $12bn if an equitable boundary were drawn, but Australia has already started exploiting several disputed fields.    Mr Brown, who will go to Dili next week to observe the next round of boundary negotiations, said Canberra's behaviour was immoral and short-sighted.    "We have got the richest country in our region robbing the poorest," he said. "People in East Timor had thought that Australia was their only friend in the region, but now they discover that the arm we put around their back was picking their pockets."    Protests outside the Australian embassy in Dili this week drew nearly 1,000 demonstrators.    Joćo Sarmento, of the movement against the occupation of the Timor Sea, said popular feeling against the Australian government was running high. "People are thinking that it's a second invasion," he said.    Under maritime law, sea boundaries should be drawn along the median line between countries - which would leave all the oil and gas in Dili's hands. In practice Australia is likely to earn more than twice as much from the reserves as East Timor. Such boundary disputes are normally decided by the international court of justice and the international tribunal on the law of the sea, but Australia left both groups two months before East Timor became independent in 2002.    During the occupation Australia recognised Jakarta's sovereignty. In return it was granted the 1989 Timor Gap treaty which settled the status of the Timorese boundary until 1999.
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