Many who championed East Timor’s cause during its occupation by Indonesia
from 1975 to 1999 have expressed surprise that East Timor’s postindependence
foreign policy has not exactly been what they expected. The
Green Left Weekly lamented this trend in 2001 by running an article entitled
“East Timor: Foreign policy heads west” in which the author accused East
Timor’s leadership of engaging in a policy that “will whitewash the past
betrayals” of the United States, Australia and others.
2 With East Timor’s
decision to assist Indonesia in undermining United Nations (UN) attempts to
secure trials for the 1999 violence in East Timor, for other commentators, this
represented an alignment with Jakarta.
3 Indeed East Timor has taken great
care to both garner the support of western nations, particularly Australia
which has agreed to underpin its security policy, and placate Indonesia, on
which East Timor’s long-term future lies