Australia may use lethal force in East Timor
Australian troops won’t be drawn into the conflict in East Timor as they attempt to restore peace and stability to the troubled island nation, the country’s defence chief said today.
Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said Australia had received its terms of engagement from the government of East Timor today.
“Essentially, we are going in with a policy of disengagement and will be going in to separate the warring factions, and we will be completely neutral in that endeavour,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Houston said East Timor had authorised Australian troops to use force in a “very measured and restrained” way.
“In essence what we’re about is using lethal force only when it is absolutely necessary to do so,” he said. “But we’re not in the business of going out and pursuing people in a very highly offensive way.”
Earlier, prime minister John Howard said Australia’s full deployment of 1,300 troops would be on the ground in East Timor by the end of the weekend.
Around 150 Australian commandos were sent yesterday to secure the Dili airport, where more troops arrived by military transport aircraft overnight.
“As we speak, there are about 350 Australia troops now in East Timor,” Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting. ”It’s reasonable to expect that by the end of the weekend all of the entire battalion group force of 1,300 will be there.”
Houston said Australian forces would focus on returning peace to the capital, Dili, and echoed earlier comments by defence minister Brendan Nelson that troops would likely have a “calming effect” on the fledgling nation.
“If we can solve the problem in Dili we may be able to solve the problem completely,” Houston said.
He refused to set a timeline, however, for when Australian troops might leave East Timor.
Howard said one of the Australian force’s aims is to ”create a secure environment for the conduct of a successful dialogue to resolve the current crisis.”
He could not say how long the Australian military presence would remain in the impoverished neighbour.
In 1999, Australia led an international peacekeeping force in East Timor to end bloodshed there after the Indonesian military and its proxy militia went on a rampage following the half-island nation’s declaration of independence from Jakarta.
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