NZ's response to East Timor crisis under fire

CANBERRA - New Zealand's response to last May's crisis in East Timor revealed serious political and military flaws that could be disastrous in future emergencies in the region, an analysis of the deployment published in an Australian defence magazine claims.

The analysis appears today in Defender, the publication of the Australian Defence Association lobby group, and is highly critical of political indecision and a misreading of events leading up to the crisis.

As a result, it says, the Government was caught out by surprise and its contribution to the Australian-led intervention was late and too small.

The Defender article also warns that Army readiness levels may be too low.

The analysis was written by Auckland University doctoral candidate Zhivan Alach, whose thesis examines defence policy in Australia following the end of the Cold War.

Mr Alach says the arrival of the first deployment of one platoon on May 27, one day after Australians began landing in strength, was within an acceptable operational and diplomatic timeframe.

But he is critical of the four-day delay between the arrival of the full contingent of Delta Company in Darwin and its deployment to Dili - even given the official position that tropical acclimatisation was necessary for a long stay in the East Timorese capital.

Other difficulties included integrating the New Zealand deployment into the huge transfer of Australian soldiers and equipment, and the negotiations between Wellington, Australia and East Timor required to resolve confusion over the Kiwis' role and activities.

Mr Alach points also to the Government's "misreading" of the lead-up to the crisis.

He says that signs of renewed violence had been building throughout April and that by early May it had become highly probably that New Zealand would need to send in troops.

But unlike Australia, which had put troops on standby much earlier, Wellington deferred its decision to ready troops.

"The primary reason for this hesitation in providing a company group to East Timor seems to have been a misreading of the situation at official and/or political levels in Wellington," Mr Alach writes.

He says reasons for this included Wellington's emphasis on multilateral consensus and its concern to avoid making any move that could be misconstrued as being overly aggressive.

There were also worries about the factional nature of the fighting in Dili, doubts about who constituted the legitimate government of East Timor, and concerns that New Zealand troops should not take sides in an incipient civil war, Mr Alach writes.

"However, the primary reason for the New Zealand Government's delay in raising the infantry company's readiness notice seems to have been a simple misjudgment of the level of conflict on the ground."

He claims the deployment revealed other shortcomings in New Zealand's ability to provide overseas assistance.

A separate Cabinet decision was needed to raise the readiness of each of the potential deployments which could have instead been arranged by senior military commanders or Defence Minister Phil Goff.

Last night Mr Goff defended NZ's deployment to Timor, saying troops were dispatched quickly. "We waited in Darwin until such time as Australia was ready for us to come."

It was not a case of misreading the crisis, he said. New Zealand troops went as soon as Australia was ready for them to enter Timor.

"I don't know where the gentleman gets his information from."