Jakarta Globe – AFP, Charles Onians, January 19, 2014
East Timorese activists hold a banner during a protest outside the Australian embassy in Dili, East Timor, on Dec. 9, 2013. (EPA Photo/Antonio Dasiparu) |
The Hague.
Tiny, young East Timor drags its giant neighbor Australia before the United
Nations’ top court next week in a cloak-and-dagger case with billions of
dollars in natural resources at stake.
At the
heart of the David and Goliath dispute at the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) in The Hague is a controversial oil and gas treaty signed by Dili in
2006, shortly after independence from Indonesia.
East Timor
wants judges at the ICJ, which rules on disputes between states, to order
Australia to return documents its intelligence services seized last year
relating to Dili’s bid to get the treaty torn up.
“It’s
simple: we’re asking for our documents back. Australia has unlawfully taken
documents that are rightfully the property of Timor-Leste,” government
spokesman Agio Pereira told AFP ahead of Monday’s hearing.
East Timor
gained its independence in 2002 following years of brutal Indonesian occupation
but has a sluggish economy that is heavily dependent on oil and gas.
Dili wants
the key treaty it signed with Canberra in 2006 dividing oil and gas resources
ripped up, saying Australia spied on ministers to gain a commercial advantage.
Australia
allegedly used an aid project refurbishing East Timor’s cabinet offices as a
front to plant listening devices in the walls in order to eavesdrop on
deliberations about the treaty in 2004.
The treaty,
Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea, or CMATS, set out a 50-50 split
of proceeds from the vast maritime energy fields between Australia and East
Timor estimated at 26 billion euros ($36 billion).
Dili signed
such treaties “at fragile and vulnerable times in our young nation’s history,”
government spokesman Pereira said.
“Now, in
2014, we are acting with a new breadth of information, data and analysis,
including information that Australia may have acted in bad faith and in breach
of international law.”
Australian
media have reported that the lion’s share of Timor Sea oil and gas would be on
Timorese territory if the maritime border were defined according to customary
rules of the sea.
But first
the half-island nation wants the ICJ to order the return of documents seized in
November when Australia’s domestic spy agency raided the Canberra offices of East
Timor’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery.
Collaery is
representing East Timor’s government in its bid lodged last year to get the
CMATS treaty cancelled at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, housed in the
same Palace of Justice in The Hague as the ICJ.
While that
case is being held behind closed doors, the ICJ hearings will for the first
time shine a very public light on Australia’s alleged skullduggery.
“This is
going to be pretty hard on Australia’s image, it’s not exactly glorious for
them,” international law expert Olivier Rentelink from The Hague’s Asser
Institute told AFP.
The
premises of a former Australian intelligence agent turned whistleblower in the
arbitration case against Canberra were also raided.
Australia
has largely refused to comment on the proceedings, although Prime Minister Tony
Abbott has defended the raids as in the national interest.
East Timor
Minister for Petroleum and Mineral Resources Alfredo Pires stressed his
country’s generally good relations with Australia but said: “The only avenue we
have as a small country is international legislation.”
Dili has
asked for “provisional measures” until the ICJ rules on the case, including
that the documents be handed to the court and that Australia guarantee it will
not intercept communications between East Timor and its legal advisers.
“Timor
Leste is a young country, we had the UN here and everyone teaching us
transparency, the rule of law, and then we get one of the great teachers not
following the rules,” said Pires.
Cases at
the ICJ can take years to resolve.
Agence France-Presse
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