From: jb00@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JOSE ANTONIO BASTO)
Subject: Re: E. Timor & Indonesia
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 01:01:51 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <1992Nov14.215739.23764@doug.cae.wisc.edu>, dewanto@cae.wisc.edu (Gas
ton Dewanto) writes:
>This is also my personal views on the situation at E. Timor and the
>Indonesia/Portugal relationships with E. Timor.
>
>In article <1992Nov15.004357.75810@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> jb00@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (J
OSE ANTONIO BASTO) writes:

... deleted discussion on E. Timor ...

>I want to make comments of two arguments made by the Portuguesse.
>
>1. Indonesia is accused to take E. Timor because of the oil resource in
>Timor Sea.
>I don't think that Indonesia knew there was oil resource in Timor Sea in
>1976. If we knew that, then the Portugal must have known too and they
>wouldn't abandon ET.
>Also it is Australia who gets most benefit from the oil resource, not
>Indonesia.
>

I will post a article about the Timor Gap oil reserves in a few days...

Portugal did know about E. Timor oil reserves, but you should know that
Portugal did fight a 3 fronts guerrilla war, against Freedom movements in
Guine'-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. This movements did have active help
from Soviet Union and China, and when they started to shoot down our airplanes
with anti-aircraft missiles (with "technical volunteers" putting the missiles
to work B-(, the war was lost (as any guerrilla war with help from external
sources, something that even the USA did learn in Vietnam, and that Indonesia
could taste, if Timor had a frontier with a third country helping to get war
material from the other "superpower".

This guerrilla war lasted for more than 13 years, it was consuming our (meager)
financial resources, and our youth. It was a dirty war, no enemies to be
fought during the day, sneak attacks during the night, and the majority of the
losses for mines (not to speak about what they did to civilians, on both
sides).

E. Timor never fought the Portuguese, probably because we respected then, we
did administration through the villages chiefs, and only in Dili we had a
little more than a thousand Portuguese ...

But even if Timor was covered with gold (not to speak about some oil fields at
the bottom of the ocean) I think that the Portuguese Military Comitee ( that
ruled after the 1974 Revolution that moved out the colonialist regime) could
had send any military unit to E. Timor: the institutions were being dismantled,
the "coup d'etat" and general confusion was the order of the day, and at the
same time, the Soviet Union and the USA was trying to pull Portugal for their
side ... This was the biggest Revolution in the recent history of Portugal, and
you can believe that we had an hard time to keep Portugal as a Country (with
no killings in the process, after 48 years of living with censorship, secret
police everywhere, assassinations of opositors, unpopular wars, etc).
When more than a million of Portuguese return (the word is escape from being
massacred...) to a 9 million country, torn apart from centuries of living to
the outside than to himself, you can bet that we had more to worry than a
remote tinny island, being assured by Indonesian diplomats that no
intervention was planned, while the Generals in Jakarta keep busy training
the invasion and the Secret Service seeded dissension in the inside of
E. Timor.

About Australia, they did plan to take E.Timor after the WWII, only being
deterred because Portugal did a treaty with the USA, giving the Americans a
aerial base at the Azores islands (a very strategic archipelago in the middle
of the Atlantic, fulcral in defeating the German U-Boats and refuel of
airplanes coming from USA to Europe) against help to recover E. Timor from
the Japanese...

It is obvious that they would have more problems in negotiating with us than
with Indonesia, and they keep a large share of the oil (againstaustralian
public opinion) and Indonesia keeps the shame...
-- 
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