Global Policy Forum

By, Paul Daley

American military officials told Australian defence strategists in June that the US would consider deploying up to 15,000 troops to East Timor, if bloodshed dramatically escalated in the troubled Indonesian province.

Specific details of American contingencies for East Timor were revealed to The Age after the Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, yesterday told Federal Parliament he was not aware of any US proposal for peace enforcement in East Timor.

A top-level diplomatic source has made it clear to The Age that US military contingency plans for East Timor include a massive deployment of American troops, including marines, for peace enforcement - as distinct from UN peacekeeping.

In June, US military officials in the Pacific told Australian officials they were factoring Darwin into their military plans and sought an agreement to attach Australian military liaison officers to a possible US peace-enforcement mission. Australian officials said that would require consideration by the Federal Government, which rejected the request.

The Age has established that American military officials told Australian counterparts that the US Pacific command was willing to coordinate, as one option, the deployment of 15,000 US troops, including marines from Okinawa in Japan and other nearby units.

The US officials made it clear that this contingency would apply in an extreme circumstance - quickly stopping large-scale violence by Indonesian-backed militias. They told Australia the peace-enforcement contingency was based on an assumption that the US would operate alone, but that Australia would become involved in UN peacekeeping later.

In a recent TV interview, Mr Downer categorically denied a report in The Sunday Age that Australia had rejected a US request to jointly plan peacekeeping for East Timor, and that the US had told Australia it would consider sending marines.

``It's false. The story, it's completely false,'' Mr Downer told Channel Nine's Sunday program on 1 August. Yesterday, he told Parliament that neither he nor the Defence Minister, Mr John Moore, were aware of US requests for Australia to participate in peace enforcement.

A spokesman for Mr Downer later said: ``There has been no policy request from Washington to participate in a peace enforcement mission to East Timor. Of course, military planners do just that - they plan for contingencies, but there has been no official request or notification about a plan.''

Mr Downer also told Parliament he rejected suggestions - including a report in The Sunday Age on 1 August - that Australia and the US had recently diverged on the circumstances under which peacekeepers should be sent to East Timor.

He said that during a meeting between the secretary of his department, Dr Ashton Calvert, and the US Assistant Secretary of State, Mr Stanley Roth, Mr Roth had been expressing personal views rather than United States policy.

According to a record of the conversation in Washington in February, which The Age has obtained, ``One area of difference ... arose with respect to our approaches concerning the security dimension of East Timor's transition. ``

Roth's approach, which he admitted was a personal view given that he had not yet discussed it with Secretary (of State Madeleine) Albright ... was that a full-scale peacekeeping operation would be an unavoidable aspect of the transition. Without it, East Timor was likely to collapse.''

According to the record, ``Roth suggested that Australia's position of keeping peacekeeping at arm's length was essentially defeatist.''

On 1 August, Mr Downer denied there had been differences between Australia and the US. He said it was nonsense to suggest there had been a standoff between Mr Roth and Dr Calvert.

On 2 August, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a statement, categorically denying ``recent press reports of differences in Australian and United States approaches'' to East Timor.

In respect to the February meeting, the statement said this was of ``historical rather than current interest'' and ``it is wrong to say that significant differences were exposed in the policies of our two governments''.

The shadow foreign minister, Mr Laurie Brereton, said: ``Foreign Minister Downer's statements on East Timor have been riddled with deceit ... for Mr Downer to say that there was no significant difference of opinion was deeply deceitful.''

He said Labor had learnt that a ``very significant difference'' of opinion was expressed at the meeting between Dr Calvert and Mr Roth.