Timor

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Endovelico
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Timor

Post by Endovelico »

East Timor Files World Court Case Vs. Australia
December 18, 2013 (AP) - By MIKE CORDER Associated Press

East Timor has launched legal action claiming that Australian agents illegally seized documents from a lawyer who represents the impoverished Asian nation in a dispute over a multibillion-dollar oil-and-gas deal, the International Court of Justice announced Wednesday.

The case at the United Nations' highest court is the latest step in a legal battle between the neighbors over a 2006 deal that shares seabed oil-and-gas reserves between the countries.

That dispute is under arbitration. Australia enraged East Timor earlier this month by raiding the home of its legal representative in the arbitration and seizing documents on the eve of a hearing.

The lawyer, Bernard Collaery, claims that Australia bugged the Cabinet office of the fledgling East Timorese government before negotiations that paved the way for the oil and gas revenue sharing deal.

On the same day Collaery's office was raided, the secret service also raided the home of a former Australian spy who made the bugging claims. The spy's identity hasn't been released.

East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has condemned the secret service raids as "counterproductive and uncooperative."

Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corp. after the spy's arrest, Collaery called the secret service action, "an attempt to intimidate our witness and to prevent the evidence going forward" in the arbitration case.

East Timor is using the alleged espionage as basis for challenging the validity of its revenue deal with Australia at the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

East Timor wants the court to order Australia to return the documents and apologize for the raid.

It also asked the court to impose urgent "provisional measures" before a final ruling including ordering Australia to seal any documents or data taken from the lawyer's office and hand them to the court and to destroy any copies made of the documents or data.

Dili also wants the court to seek assurances from Australia that it will not intercept communications between East Timor and its legal advisers.

No date was immediately set for a hearing. Cases at the International Court of Justice usually take months or years to resolve. The court's decisions are final and legally binding.
Timor's relationship with Australia has always been difficult as Australia tried to grab all the oil existing between the two countries. Soon after independence Timor asked for Portugal to send a company of Republican Guards (sort of a militarized police force), which was used as a personal guard to the President, mainly to protect him and his government from Australian harassment. More than once those guards and the Australian military faced each other in the streets of Dili in a less than friendly manner. A deal was finally reached to share the oil wealth, but Australia has kept trying to grab more than it is entitled to. This incident is just an episode in the intimidation campaign by Australia against Timor.

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noddy
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Re: Timor

Post by noddy »

what a load of nationalist poppycock.

no argument that australia has been very american in their approach to the oil fields, no argument australia spied and exploited its advanced technological status when dealing with them.

plenty of argument about the colonial games going on between the indonesians, dutchies, portugese against the timorese and the messy mix of good and bad australia has done in this environment.

we *used* to have a cozy relaltionship (wink wink, nudge nudge) with indonesia that meant we get the oil and then we ignored their atrocities against the timorese and west papuans.

we broke that agreement at great cost to our relationship with the indonesians and got involved for the benefit of the timorese and then we exploited that relationship to make sure we still got the oil.

plenty of stupid in what has happened, no argument, but its a million miles from noble portugese and nasty australians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian ... East_Timor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_East_Timorese_crisis
ultracrepidarian
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Endovelico
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Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:00 pm

Re: Timor

Post by Endovelico »

noddy wrote:what a load of nationalist poppycock.

no argument that australia has been very american in their approach to the oil fields, no argument australia spied and exploited its advanced technological status when dealing with them.

plenty of argument about the colonial games going on between the indonesians, dutchies, portugese against the timorese and the messy mix of good and bad australia has done in this environment.

we *used* to have a cozy relaltionship (wink wink, nudge nudge) with indonesia that meant we get the oil and then we ignored their atrocities against the timorese and west papuans.

we broke that agreement at great cost to our relationship with the indonesians and got involved for the benefit of the timorese and then we exploited that relationship to make sure we still got the oil.

plenty of stupid in what has happened, no argument, but its a million miles from noble portugese and nasty australians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian ... East_Timor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_East_Timorese_crisis
I'm not trying to whitewash the Portuguese colonial past in Timor. But we are on the other side of the world and have practically no economic interests in that country. Australia is next door and very much colonial minded in respect of Timor. BTW Australians were very upset when a Portuguese firm offered to buy the whole of Timor's coffee crop - which used to be bought by Australia - at a significantly higher price. Which indicates the type of reasons why Australia didn't like seeing Portuguese forces in post-independence Timor. We may not be all that "noble", seeing our history, but we tried in Timor to atone for what we did wrong there and elsewhere, by assisting the Timorese government without any consideration for any - very minimal - interests we might have. It was a truly friendly intervention, and the Timorese have often recognized that. As to Australians being "nasty", I guess they are not nastier than most. But they have behaved like gangsters in respect of Timor.
"Australia was on a path to cementing its ties with East Timor, which it hoped would be grateful and compliant. But it didn't turn out that way. Very soon it became clear that East Timorese did not want such a relationship with Australia, which history had taught them to regard with caution. The help received had been on Australia's terms, East Timor had many friends, and it was ready to move on.

Indeed it put obstacles in the way of further assistance from Australia, which may or may not have been intentional. Its interim leaders chose to adopt Portuguese and not the more pragmatic English as the language with which they would communicate with the outside world. Rather than the mooted Australian dollar, they took the US dollar as their unit of currency. They adopted a legal system based on that of the Portuguese.

The years after independence saw Australia become increasingly 'on the nose' for East Timorese. We used our muscle to try to dictate a share of oil revenue from the Timor Sea which they perceived as unfair. This was a reminder that Australian maneuvering to secure more oil went back to 1974, when Portugal lost its grip, and officials in Canberra were arguing that Australia would get a better deal if Indonesia controlled Timor."

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article. ... rQzSuVO2-0
"Portugal is the biggest aid donor to East Timor, having granted over US$ 350 million since it voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Timor ... _relations
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