Canberra, 13 February 1976
O.CH320504 SECRET ROUTINE
Timor
Ref O.LB7231
We can understand that Timor has been a very difficult problem for the Portuguese with their procession of governments and foreign ministers throughout most of 1975. But what we find hard to understand is why, when the Portuguese think of an initiative, it is almost invariably unrealistic where it is not simply unhelpful. The idea for a conference of the Timorese factions, under United Nations auspices, is both unhelpful and unrealistic. The idea might have proved a good one when it was first being mooted in early December (LB615),2 but since then FRETILIN’S military position has [c]rumbled and the PGET has been able to extend its control to virtually all the main towns. FRETILIN resistance is likely to have collapsed into isolated, uncoordinated, and possibly not very effective, guerilla operations. In this situation, it is hard to see the Indonesians or the PGET’s agreeing to anything which might serve to breathe new life into FRETILIN.
- It is more than likely, of course, that the Portuguese recognise all this, but that they are determined to keep the Timor issue alive in the UN as a means of embarrassing the Indonesians. We wonder, however, whether the objective is to get the Indonesians to withdraw or rather to maintain pressure on Indonesia to release the 23 Portuguese prisoners. It is possible to see an arrangement emerging whereby Portugal moderates its attitude in the United Nations, while Indonesia induces the PGET to give up the prisoners? It would seem that the release of the prisoners would at least go some way towards reducing tensions between Indonesia and Portugal.
- We would be grateful for your comments as well as Jakarta’s.3
[NAA: Al0463, 801/13/11/1, XX]
- 1 (12 February). It reported a conversation between Cooper and Crespo, the Portuguese Minister for Cooperation. Crespo considered that Winspeare Guicciardi’s mission had ascertained the degree to which the Provisional Government of East Timor was controlled by the Indonesian military and the cultural and economic ditierences between the peoples of East Timor and West Timor. Consequently, in Crespo’s view, Winspeare would be aware that the case for the integration of Portuguese Timor into Indonesia ‘had not yet been established’. Crespo added that Indonesia would have been further advanced towards its objective of integrating Portuguese Timor had it not intervened militarily but instead encouraged round-table talks. He considered that the only solution to the problem of East Timor was a conference under UN auspices of the Timorese political factions, with the PGET included as one faction, to ‘express their views about the modalities of self-determination’.
- 2 Document 368.
- 3 Cablegram JA4830 (14 February) reported that according to Tjan there was a difference of opinion within the Indonesian Government about the Portuguese prisoners. One view was that they should be released only after the East Tunor issue had been solved. Another was that they should be released as soon as possible. Sunarso was reported to have indicated that the soldiers were being held as ‘bargaining counters to ensure that the Portuguese did nothing “rash” in the area. They would not be released until the two Portuguese corvettes were withdrawn from the region’. Cablegram JA4856 (16 February) reported that the Indonesian Foreign Ministry appeared to consider the Portuguese prisoners ‘as some form of insurance against the possibility that the Portuguese (through their corvettes) take anti-Indonesian/PGET action in East Timor’.