Fed: Don't make us beg for oil - E Timor's first lady

AAP General News (Australia)
08-02-2004
Fed: Don't make us beg for oil - E Timor's first lady

By Maria Hawthorne

CANBERRA, Aug 2 AAP - East Timor's first lady today appealed to the Australian government
not to make her country beg for a fair share of the Timor Sea oil and gas reserves.

Melbourne-born Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, the wife of East Timorese president Xanana Gusmao,
said the fledgling nation needed access to the energy reserves to rebuild hospitals, schools
and the economy.

She called on the Australian government to put selfishness aside when drawing up seabed
boundaries to divide up the estimated $30 billion in royalties from Timor Sea oil and
gas deposits.

"I certainly don't think it's dignified for East Timor to be forced into begging,"

Mrs Sword-Gusmao said.

"That's not a fate befitting the people who have fought so hard and lost so much in
order to be able to get to this point."

Talks between the two countries, scheduled for next month, are in doubt after the Australian
government threatened to suspend them a week ago when the Labor opposition said it might
have to start negotiations from scratch if it won the coming election.

An interim deal gives East Timor 90 per cent of government revenue from the so-called
Joint Petroleum Development Area, including the Conoco Phillips-operated Bayu Undan field
and part of the Woodside Petroleum-operated Sunrise project.

But East Timor has refused to ratify a second deal - the international unitisation
agreement, which puts 80 per cent of Sunrise in Australian waters and the remaining 20
per cent in the joint development area.

Mrs Sword-Gusmao said East Timor was one of the world's poorest countries, with more
than 40 per cent of the population living on 40 Australian cents a day and where 12 per
cent of children did not live to five years of age.

The former Indonesian province has been reliant on foreign aid to keep its $100 million
annual budget afloat since becoming a nation in May 2002.

"We are so far aid dependent, and without access to the oil that we say is legally
ours. We are in poverty and need to struggle to overcome this," Mrs Sword-Gusmao told
a forum in Canberra today.

"And in this fight against poverty and ignorance we also need Australia to play fair
in resolving access to the resources of the Timor Sea that will be vital for rebuilding
this new nation."

She said she was not asking for generosity or charity, but justice and fairness.

"I am compelled to say something as I am forced to stand by and not adequately help
families who have too little to eat. I am compelled to say something as I have to sit
by and watch children die from preventable diseases through lack of medical resources,
and I am compelled to say something as the women, children and communities of East Timor
suffer so much," she said.

"The right to a maritime boundary is vital to the future of East Timor.

"The right to a maritime boundary is an inherent part of Timor's right to self determination.

"Exercising this right is vitally important to East Timor's future because the resources
secured by a boundary will make the difference between becoming a viable, prosperous,
and independent nation, or being continually dependent on aid."

AAP mfh/sb/was/de

KEYWORD: TIMOR GAS NIGHTLEAD

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