Foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has already been hit by a flurry of letters, protesting against his government's refusal to hand back control of the Timor Gap oil reserves to East Timor. Printed below are excerpts from some of the letters.
"News media tell us that in August 1975, as the Suharto dictatorship was preparing to invade East Timor, Australian Ambassador to Indonesia Richard Woolcott sent a cable to Canberra urging compliance with Indonesia's plans to annex East Timor.
"He wrote: 'It would seem to me that this department [of minerals and energy] might well have an interest in closing the present gap in the agreed sea border and this could be much more readily negotiated with Indonesia than with Portugal; or independent Portuguese Timor. I know I am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about.'
"What followed was 25 years of Australian government complicity in an illegal and brutal military occupation of East Timor. More than 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives to famine, war and slaughter ...
"The treaty is surely now of no validity. Negotiations have allegedly begun between Canberra and Dili ... on a new treaty between East Timor and Australia ...
"We bear a moral debt to the East Timorese for 25 years of complicity in the destruction and terrorisation of their country. Do we still have to put economic growth and competition before human rights?"
Doug Everingham, <doug@worldcitizen.org>.
"DAWN, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, a network of feminist activist scholars of the South ... was amongst the organisations that requested the United Nations to accept its responsibility to protect the lives of the people of East Timor and to deliver their political rights to independence at the time of Indonesian military terrorism in September 1999.
"Now, out of concern for economic justice for the people of East Timor, DAWN joins the protest against Australia's attempts to claim oil resources that rightfully belong to the people of East Timor.
"We strongly request Australia to:
"Unconditionally recognise a seabed boundary equidistant between East Timor and Australia, as it already does in relation to ocean resources above the seabed;
"Immediately declare to UNTAET and the Timorese that if the Timorese people decide, for whatever reason, they wish to keep the Zone of Cooperation, Australia will require no royalties. This is part compensation for the damage done by 25 years of complicity in Suharto's war against the East Timorese people; and
"Immediately announce a commitment to hand over to an independent East Timor all royalties already collected from the Zone of Cooperation."
Seona Smiles, communications officer, DAWN secretariat, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji.
"What a shame and disgrace. Makes me glad not to be Australian. I am sure that the majority of the Australian public would not endorse this mercenary act, if they were aware. Of course Australia should help pay the price of ending the suffering and repairing the damage its economic and political ties with the Indonesians brought about in the first place ...
"I would advise Mr Howard, Timor needs all the resource revenue it can get — hands off! Act to strengthen Timorese independence and economic viability, not tie them to aid dependence and indebtedness as you have so cynically done with PNG!"
Sabet Cox, director, HELP Resources, Wewak, East Sepik province, Papua New Guinea, <sabet@global.net.pg>.
"I urge the Australian Government, in recompense to the East Timorese people for its complicity in 25 years of terrorism against them and the destruction of their economy, to cease collecting royalties paid to it from the sale of East Timor's oil under the highly immoral and illegal Timor Gap Treaty and to immediately pay back those royalties already collected.
"We owe the East Timorese an enormous debt — it's time we paid it."
Janet Lucas.