This study on the Issue of West Irian and East Timor before Indonesia and Australia is a reexamination of the past events that will hopefully provide lessons for the future. It is confined to the policies of Indonesia and Australia towards West Irian and East Timor. The study begins with an introduction of the Australian and Indonesian foreign policy in general and the relations between them. It then goes on the examine aspects of Indonesian and the Australian policy in West Irian that exercised influence on the relation between the two in a divisive way. The Australian policy in West Irian initially had opposed the Indonesian claim of the island. Later Australia extricated itself from its support of Dutch control of West Irian when its strategic appreciation of the territory that bestrides its northern approaches changed from the perception that it was vital to Australia’s defence to the recognition that the stability and orientation of Indonesia was more important. For Indonesia the struggle for national unity and the accommodation of diversity has been one of the defining themes of Indonesian history. President Sukarno described the issue as one of colonialism or independence. And foreign policy was conducted as a continuation of revolutionary struggle with the immediate priority of securing West Irian. Much of the contemporary Papuan Pro-independence rhetoric is a critique of the process of negotiations that culminated in the 1962 New York Agreement and the conduct of the Act of Free Choice in 1969. The study then focuses on the compulsions of Indonesian and Australian policy in East Timor. The concluding chapter carries definite conclusions the are drawn from a comprehensive discussion of these two issues.
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