Global Policy Forum

By Dana Milbank

President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger gave Indonesian President Suharto the go-ahead for Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor that left at least 200,000 dead, newly declassified documents show.

It has long been suspected that Ford and Kissinger approved the invasion of the former Portuguese colony. They met with Suharto in Jakarta on Dec. 6, 1975, the day before he sent Indonesian forces into East Timor.

This has been denied by Kissinger, who has maintained that he learned of the plan at the airport only as he was preparing to leave the country.

Nearly three years after the bloody clashes that accompanied a United Nations-sponsored referendum on independence, East Timor is scheduled to become independent next May.

In a secret State Department telegram, Ford and Kissinger assured Suharto that they would not object to what the Indonesian leader termed "rapid or drastic action" in East Timor.

"We will understand and will not press you on the issue," Ford said, according to the telegram, which was declassified in June and posted on the Web site of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."

The private research group said it obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

Kissinger told Suharto: "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly." He also urged Suharto to wait until he and Ford returned to the United States. "The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 PM Jakarta time," he said. "We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned."

Kissinger also suggested that the United States could construe Indonesia's operation as "self defense" rather than a "foreign operation." At the time of the invasion, the United States supplied the bulk of Indonesia's weapons on the condition that they be used only for defense or internal security.

Asked in 1995 about the U.S. role before the invasion, Kissinger replied: "Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia. At the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor. To us that did not seem like a very significant event, because the Indians had occupied the Portuguese colony of Goa 10 years earlier, and to us it looked like another process of decolonization."

The Kissinger remarks were recounted in a book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," by journalist Christopher Hitchens, published earlier this year.

Another conversation between Ford and Suharto, declassified in July, indicates that the Indonesians made their ambition to take over Timor clear to the Americans at least as early as July 5, 1975.

On the topic of Timor, Suharto told Ford by telephone on that day that "an independent country would hardly be viable. . . . So the only way is to integrate into Indonesia."

Kissinger did not return a phone call yesterday.

David D. Newsom, ambassador to Indonesia at the time, said that while not objecting to the invasion, Kissinger did not encourage it. "Kissinger's response has to be put in the context of the situation of the time," Newsom said. "He had just come from China, Vietnam was collapsing, if it hadn't collapsed. . . . Kissinger, who saw things in a geopolitical, strategic light, was very much concerned that this vast stretch of territory representing Indonesia not fall into anti-American hands."

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