East Timor has
signalled it will drop it’s secondary legal case against Australia regarding
ASIO’s raids on the offices of Timor's Australian lawyers, but will recommence
the original legal proceedings which prompted the controversial raids.
The
raids occurred days before legal proceedings were to be heard in The Hague, in
which East Timor was seeking to have a lucrative oil and gas treaty nullified
due to revelations that Australia had bugged the Timorese cabinet room during
the negotiations.
The
Timor Sea Justice Campaign’s spokesperson in Melbourne, Tom Clarke, said
dropping the side case regarding the seized documents will allow East Timor to
get back to focussing on the original case and the need for permanent maritime
boundaries.
“The
allegations that our Government spied on one of our neighbours for mere
economic gain shocked many fair-minded Australians, but disappointingly it fits
a pattern of bullying behaviour from successive Australian Governments that
have been intent on short-changing East Timor out of billions of dollars in gas
and oil revenues,” said Mr Clarke.
A
common misconception is that East Timor is asking for it’s maritime boundaries
to be redrawn, but in fact, East Timor has never had maritime boundaries and is
simply seeking to have them established for the first time - as is the right of
every sovereign nation.
Australia
has refused to negotiate permanent maritime boundaries and has instead jostled
East Timor into a series of temporary resource sharing arrangements. The latest
- the Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) Treaty - which
covers the $40 billion Greater Sunrise gas field, is the treaty that East Timor
has sought to have scrapped following the relations about spying.
Mr
Clarke said it made sense for East Timor to focus it’s energies on the bigger
issue of establishing fair and permanent maritime boundaries that will complete
Timor’s journey to full sovereignty and also deliver billions of dollar in oil
and gas revenue.
“As
interesting - and deeply embarrassing for Australia - as the case about the
ASIO raids was, ultimately it’s a bit of a sideshow because every day spent not
pursuing permanent maritime boundaries is another day that Australia benefits
from the unfair and incomplete arrangements that it bullied East Timor into
more than a decade ago,” said Mr Clarke.
The
International Court of Justice had already issued a provisional ruling in the
case. It ordered the Australian Government not to access the documents it had
seized and delivered an unprecedented rebuke, telling Australia to immediately
stop interfering with East Timor’s communications and not to use national
security as an alibi for commercial espionage.
Mr
Clarke said the announcement did not mean that East Timor was laying the spying
scandal to rest, as the bugging of rooms in East Timor’s Government Palace in
Dili is central to its case that Australia had not signed the CMATS treaty in
good faith.
“I
don’t think Tony Abbott would be too happy if New Zealand - or North Korea for
that matter - had bugged his cabinet room to help rip-off Australia in trade
treaties. So it’s completely understandable and appropriate that East Timor to
pursue this matter further,” said Mr Clarke.
Australia
withdrew its recognition of the maritime boundary jurisdiction of the
International Court of Justice in 2002, just two months before East Timor’s
independence.
“We’re
looking at very uneven negotiating positions. On one hand you have Australia, a
large wealthy nation with vast territorial waters and resources, and on the
other you have East Timor, one of the poorest nations in Asia in real need to
secure ongoing revenue,” said Mr Clarke.
The
Timor Sea Justice Campaign is reinvigorating a grass roots campaign to
encourage the Australian Government to give East Timor a fair go in the Timor
Sea by establishing fair and permanent maritime boundaries in keeping with
current international law.
For
further information or comments, please contact Tom Clarke on 0422 545 763
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