Michael Richardson: Co-operation key to peace

Seven years ago, when Australia and New Zealand led an international force mandated by the United Nations to restore peace to East Timor after its people had voted overwhelmingly to become independent, the main fear in Canberra and Wellington was that ultra-nationalists in the Indonesian Army, Government and Parliament would continue to meddle in East Timorese affairs.

This did not happen. Instead, Australian and New Zealand forces - with troops and police from Malaysia and Portugal - have been called back by a beleaguered Government in Dili. Although a self-inflicted wound for East Timor, it is nonetheless a reminder for Australia and New Zealand how important it is to maintain good relations with Indonesia.

The residue of anti-Australian and anti-New Zealand feeling after the loss of East Timor remains a significant factor in Indonesian politics, particularly in the still-powerful Army and among lawmakers.

But even before the disastrous earthquake struck the main Indonesian island of Java last weekend, the Government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had adopted a public position of neutrality on East Timor's request for outside military help.

Australian officials say that in private the Indonesian Government has welcomed the moves to restore stability in East Timor. It certainly helped that one of the countries involved is Malaysia, Indonesia's partner in Asean, the Association of South East Asian Nations.

Although East Timor's Government has been slow and inept in handling its slow-building Army crisis, its leaders were wise since independence in May 2002 to cultivate co-operative relations with Jakarta and to ensure that the foreign peacemaking force now patrolling Dili is leavened by soldiers from a country close to Indonesia.

Australia needs to ensure that its ties with Indonesia remain particularly close and co-operative. New Zealand is further away and has a South Pacific outlook, but its trade and other links with Asia are substantial and Indonesia looms large in the distance on its northwestern horizon.

The status of the Indonesian province of Papua has emerged in recent weeks as the biggest challenge for ties between Canberra and Jakarta since the East Timor intervention in 1999. The decision by Australia in March to grant temporary protection visas to a group of supporters of Papuan independence infuriated many Indonesian officials and lawmakers.

Since leading the East Timor intervention force in 1999, the Government of Prime Minister John Howard has said repeatedly that Australia does not support long-running separatist movements in either mineral-rich Papua province, abutting Papua New Guinea to the north of Australia, or in Aceh province. But from Jakarta's perspective, Canberra's decision to grant asylum meant that the Australian Government had concluded that the Papuans who fled faced a well-founded fear of persecution if they were returned to Indonesia.

This was a political slap in the face for President Yudhoyono, who had given a personal assurance that the asylum seekers would not be persecuted if they returned.

Indonesia recalled its ambassador from Canberra and President Yudhoyono refused until this week to take phone calls from Prime Minister Howard.

Recognising a policy breakdown, the Australian Government introduced laws requiring that all asylum seekers arriving by boat be sent to offshore holding centres while their claims are assessed. This has helped to patch up ties, as did a recent meeting in Singapore between the Australian and Indonesian Foreign Ministers.

Prime Minister Howard and President Yudhoyono are scheduled to meet in Indonesia this month, hopefully to put relations back on an even keel. This meeting should also be an opportunity for Howard to remind Yudhoyono that it will be easier to manage Australia-Indonesia relations if Jakarta takes more effective steps to curb abuses of power by military and other officials in Papua. This is an issue New Zealand should watch closely and handle carefully, because activists who support Papuan independence from Indonesia are active in the South Pacific.

The stakes are particularly high for Australia. The opportunity to work with a secular and moderate Indonesian leader like Yudhoyono to rebuild the economy and consolidate democracy in the world's fourth most populous nation may not come again.

In many of the challenges Australia and New Zealand face in the Southeast Asian and South Pacific region, the co-operation of Indonesia - which has more Muslims than any other country - is essential. Those challenges include curbing Islamic extremism and terrorism, stopping illegal immigration and pirate fishing, combating transnational crime and ensuring peace and stability.

The Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and now East Timor are examples of the strains and responsibilities placed on Australia and its relatively small professional Army by nearby weak or failing states. New Zealand, too, because of its activist policy in the South Pacific and close co-operation with Australia in regional peacekeeping, faces similar stresses.

Both Australia and New Zealand need to ensure the Indonesian Government's tacit concurrence, if not open support, for peacemaking operations to strengthen democratic institutions in what is, after all, their common neighbourhood.

* Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.