Emotional return to free Timor

Herald reporter MATHEW DEARNALEY, who leaves today for East Timor, previews Foreign Minister Phill Goff's visit to the territory, his first official trip in his new role.


Foreign Minister Phil Goff will make an emotion-filled journey back to East Timor today, the first official overseas visit of his globe-trotting portfolio.

While acknowledging that the symbolism might pose a challenge to dialogue with Indonesia, he said yesterday that he was confident that Jakarta's new commitment to democracy was strong enough to bridge any gap.

Meanwhile, he said, it was important for New Zealand to make amends for past foreign policy failures to condemn human rights abuses during almost 25 years of the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia's previous regime.

East Timor had been a major obstacle in the way of this country's relationship with Indonesia, which could only improve now that it had been overcome.

Mr Goff was last in East Timor, as an Opposition MP, in August, monitoring the historic independence referendum that unleashed waves of retribution against the East Timorese by retreating Indonesian-backed militias.

Tomorrow he will meet paramount resistance leader Xanana Gusmao, whom he visited under house arrest in Jakarta before the referendum, and joint Nobel Peace Prize winners Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos Horta He will also visit New Zealand troops near the West Timor border, a refugee camp and aid projects before returning home via Adelaide, where he will hold his first meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Mr Goff said his return to a free but devastated East Timor would be an emotional journey.

"I have followed events there for 23 years and it is a little bit like watching the transition of South Africa from apartheid or the restoration of democracy in Chile," he said.

"The people have been through hell and back and now they are on the edge of a remarkable opportunity to make a transition to a free and democratic East Timor."

But he warned that the hard work was not over, and that the East Timorese faced an enormous task, with the help of the international community, to rebuild their country and infrastructure virtually from scratch.

A whole new civil society had to be constructed, since Indonesia and Portugal before it had supplied the vast majority of administrators and professionals such as teachers and doctors.

Although East Timor had many people of great calibre, there were huge skills gaps and even the most basic decisions on what official language or currency to have lay ahead of them.

Mr Goff accepted that New Zealand's military commitment, at a cost of about $70 million, far outweighed civilian aid of $2.5 million, but said development could not take place without a guarantee of security.

New Zealand was making a major pledge to regional stability and he did not accept that the security challenge from militias across the West Timor border had yet subsided.

Meanwhile, the delicate path that New Zealand has to tread in its relationship with Indonesia was highlighted in Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefing papers released by Mr Goff yesterday.

"The bilateral political relationship is correct but not warm," say officials, after noting that Indonesia is important to New Zealand for strategic, foreign policy and economic reasons.

But they welcome "a clear break from the past" by the new Government of President Wahid and suggest that a suspension of modest defence links with Indonesia could be reassessed if it atones for human rights abuses in East Timor.

They hope for high-level political contacts as a first step to considering waiving that suspension, and also restoring visa-free status for Indonesian visitors to New Zealand.