5 - Diplomacy, Peacekeeping, and Nation-Building: New Zealand and East Timor

Summary

Introduction

New Zealand's formal diplomatic relations with East Timor began on 20 May 2000, when the former Portuguese colony became fully independent. In the prior 25 years East Timor had been invaded and annexed by Indonesia, suffered loss of life from guerrilla resistance and Indonesian reprisals, stabilized by an international peacekeeping force, and assisted and tutored by a UN mission.

New Zealand had been cultivating bilateral relations during the four years prior to independence. And for nearly three decades before that East Timor had been a security, diplomatic, and humanitarian concern to successive governments in Wellington. This chapter traces the evolution of New Zealand's involvement with East Timor from early awareness in the 1970s to deep involvement from 1999, touches on costs and gains, and speculates on future relations.

Early Awareness

Prior to 1974 East Timor (then Portuguese Timor) was known mainly as a battleground between Japanese and Australian forces during World War II, and later as a backward but tranquil colony in an otherwise turbulent region. New Zealand officials first took serious note of East Timor in the months following Portugal's change of government and acknowledgement of its overseas possessions’ right of self-determination and independence. East Timor seemed poised to make a leap from colonialism to self-government and independence, but this was a process fraught with uncertainty, particularly in the Cold War context.

New Zealand officials+ generally favoured self-government for East Timor but were anxious that the transition be done peacefully, and not disrupt the fragile Southeast Asian consensus. To this end New Zealand officials conferred with their counterparts in neighbouring Indonesia in November 1974, agreed that developments should contribute to stability, and hoped East Timor would not come under the influence of the Soviet Union or China.

In the early months of 1975, as the political climate heated up, New Zealand officials made informal contacts with some of the new East Timorese leaders. One of the first was José Ramos Horta, the foreign affairs spokesman of the popular FRETILIN party, who visited New Zealand in July 1975 to publicize his cause amongst NGOs and the media. That same month New Zealand diplomats contacted leaders of the rival UDT party in Díli. These were the two largest of the several parties that sprang up following the liberalization of colonial policy by Portugal in 1974.