UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL
Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission of Support in Timor-Leste
Statement by H.E. Mr John Dauth LVO
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Australia
to the United Nations
New York, 20 February 2004
Mr President
Australia is proud of what we have done to assist Timor Leste in building a stable and sustainable democracy. No country has done more. We remain committed to helping Timor Leste with its security and development challenges – bilaterally and through the United Nations. Together with the UN, we have a big stake in ensuring that East Timor is equipped to meet the challenges it faces, and that it succeeds.
Australia’s contribution has, of course, been part of a highly cooperative and effective international effort. It is our strong desire that this cooperative, consensus-based approach continue as we enter into a new phase of engagement with Timor Leste.
Despite the encouraging progress, further international assistance to Timor Leste remains essential. That is not at question. It is the form of assistance that we need to get right. The Secretary-General’s report is an excellent point of departure. Australia fully supports the recommendation for a one-year extension of UNMISET at a reduced level, to be headed by a SRSG which includes military liaison officers, police and civilian advisers, and legal experts to finalise the priority serious crimes caseload. The recommendations target the right areas of continuing need.
Mr President
It is clear that the mission needs some form of armed security component. Australia is firmly of the view that a back-up UN policing component is necessary to help East Timor address its likely law and order challenges. If the UN so decides, we would also join a consensus on a peacekeeping force.
As you would be aware, Australia has been carefully analysing Timor Leste’s security needs for a considerable time. In October last year we told the Council what we believed the threats were and how they should be addressed. Developments since then have confirmed that our assessment is fundamentally sound. We consider that Timor Leste’s security challenges – highlighted, for example, by the 2002 Dili riot and the armed assaults near the border in early 2003 – remain substantial, but these are internal and will require a police rather than military response.
Timor Leste's external threat environment is relatively benign. Ex-militia in West Timor pose a much-reduced threat; the small group of remaining hardliners are focused primarily on cross-border criminal activity. The last major security incident was over one year ago and Indonesia continues to work against cross-border destabilisation.
We share the Secretary-General's assessment about the weaknesses in Timor Leste's security institutions. The capacity, experience and policy frameworks of its police service, remain limited and this too suggests that a back-up emergency UN police response group is likely to be required.
Emergency Police Response Unit
Our fundamental concern is that if a back-up UN police unit does not help Timor Leste address its internal security challenges, who would? A properly designed emergency police response group would be able to deal with the broad spectrum of security incidents that may arise, including in the border area. Such a unit would serve an essential complementary role to any PKF presence, should one be agreed.
A police unit would have appropriate training and expertise to deal with Timor Leste's internal law and order problems, and would provide a more graduated and faster response to any incident; for example a police unit could provide a constabulary function and would have the power to arrest. Under the model proposed by Australia, day-to-day and executive policing would be the sole responsibility of the Timor Leste government and its police service. The UN police unit would deploy only in emergency situations that risk overwhelming the local police and at the request of Timor Leste's Prime Minister. If agreed by the SRSG (after consulting with the UN Police Adviser and unit commander), the unit would be the lead agency for an incident until it was resolved and responsibility was handed back formally to the Timor Leste government. The model is similar to the 'call-out' arrangements proposed by the Secretary-General for a PKF.
Australian experience suggests that such command and control arrangements work.
Mr President
I should also say plainly that we fully sympathise with the need for force protection for the unarmed Military Liaison Officers, and would envision the police unit also having the capacity to protect UN personnel in emergency situations, as UN gendarmes have done in other contexts. The police unit must therefore have the capacity of timely self-deployment to both urban and rural areas and access to helicopter support.
Day-to-day, we would envision the police unit mentoring and providing some training to Timor Leste's specialist police units, as well as conducting liaison visits throughout the country. This reassuring visible presence would promote calm and security.
In short, Mr President, we would see an armed back-up police unit being able to perform many of the tasks the Secretary-General has set out in his report on East Timor’s post-UNMISET needs.
The safety of such a unit would not be predicated on the availability of a substantial back-up PKF. The unit would be of a size capable of handling likely law and order threats; it would be well-armed and would be backed by local police and, subject to future legislation, potentially the Timor Leste’s defence force.
Mr President
We believe that the best way ahead for the new phase of UNMISET is clear. It involves a model built on the key recommendations of the Secretary-General that also addresses the real internal security risks and weak policing capacities. We encourage the Council to move expeditiously to endorse such an outcome and maintain the tradition of consensus on this issue.