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2 Tricky treaty for Indonesia and
Australia By Duncan Graham
JAKARTA - A proposed security treaty
between Indonesia and Australia, now under
scrutiny in Canberra, is coming under robust
attack by lawyers, activists and aid agencies.
The seven-page, 19-article document comes
after two years of negotiations and aims to
salvage the neighboring countries' deteriorating
bilateral relationship, which has been hobbled in
recent years by Indonesia's ongoing concerns that
Australia is bent on undermining its territorial
integrity.
The proposed treaty aims to
foster closer bilateral cooperation on
a
broad range of security-related fronts, including
defense, law enforcement, intelligence gathering
and counter-terrorism. Human trafficking,
drug-running and money-laundering are on the
treaty's target list, as well as strengthening
bilateral nuclear cooperation for peaceful
purposes.
Critics in Australia contend
that the document is long on warm and fuzzy
"mutual respect" and "cooperative" platitudes, but
short on actual details about how the two sides
would actually work together in the event of a
crisis. There are no proposed budgets, guarantees
or sanctions for non-compliance in the draft
treaty.
Moreover, the draft document,
known as the Lombok Treaty, includes provisions
that if implemented in present form would
potentially inhibit free speech in Australia and
hamper the activities of non-governmental and aid
organizations that monitor and react to
humanitarian, rights and environmental issues in
Indonesia.
Indeed, the wording of the
document is so broad that vague terms like "the
maintenance of international peace and security"
could be used legally to justify Jakarta
intensifying its surveillance and
institutionalizing its harassment of Australian
aid and non-governmental organizations active in
Indonesia.
The vague nature of the
bilateral treaty fits a historical pattern. In
1995, Australia negotiated a secret strategic
treaty with Indonesia's strongman president
Suharto. This agreement was shredded four years
later by his successor B J Habibie when, to
Jakarta's chagrin, Australia led a United Nations
peacekeeping force in newly independent East
Timor.
Two years ago, current President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono proposed a new strategic
treaty seeking to formalize and expand Australian
aid to Indonesia's security forces. It also sought
a clear concrete statement by Australia that it
would respect Indonesian sovereignty over its vast
archipelago.
Indonesians remain deeply
suspicious of Australia's ambitions in Southeast
Asia, particularly since under Prime Minister John
Howard it has taken on the self-appointed role of
"deputy sheriff" to the United States for
overseeing security affairs in the region.
Bellicose comments that Howard made in the
aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 88
Australian citizens that his country would
consider preemptive strikes on sovereign Southeast
Asian countries to avert another terrorist attack
went down badly across the entire region.
Yudhoyono - who enjoys strong personal
relations with Howard, frequently visits Australia
and currently has a son in university at Perth -
hopes that a bilateral strategic pact will
alleviate popular apprehensions about Australia's
perceived expansionist designs, particularly in
far-flung areas rich in natural resources and
fossil-fuel deposits.
For Howard, on the
other hand, a treaty will ensure Indonesia's
now-limp cooperation in cracking downing on
political-asylum seekers who in growing numbers
are transiting through the archipelago en route to
Australia. He also hopes a pact will strengthen
the two sides' joint anti-terrorism operations.
Poor political timing Still,
it's arguably an inopportune political time for
the two sides to enter any sort of agreement.
After a series of bilateral spats and terrorist
attacks directed specifically against Australian
interests in Indonesia, mistrust is rife on both
sides of the Arafura Sea between Australia and
Papua.
Moreover, it's an election year in
Australia and foreign affairs will be high on the
public agenda. At the top will be the future of
Australia's troop commitments in Iraq. But next on
the list will be the strained relations between
Australia's big, empty and prosperous continent of
20 million and its heavily populated,
poverty-ridden, Muslim-majority northern neighbor.
A recent survey by a respected
Australia-based think-tank, the Lowy Institute for
International Policy, found that a majority of
Australians fret about Indonesia exporting
instability south of its borders. The survey's
respondents stated their beliefs that Indonesia is
still a military-run state that harbors Islamic
terrorists and could one day even pose an armed
threat to Australia. They also notably ranked
Indonesia above Iran, Iraq and North Korea - the
three states that make up US President George W
Bush's so-called "axis of evil" - in the
clear-and-present-danger category.
Lowy
researchers Ivan and Malcolm Cook concluded:
"Australia has a blind spot on Indonesia and our
government has a serious public-diplomacy
problem." Published late last year, the poll
results were released just before the two sides
inked their provisional Framework for Security
Cooperation Agreement, which
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