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MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS  HON ALEXANDER DOWNER, MP



TRANSCRIPTION: PROOF COPY E & OE

DATE:  3 September 2006



TITLE:    Doorstop - Stirling Council Chambers, Adelaide

TOPIC: East Timor, uranium enrichment, Islamic migrants learning English



ALEXANDER DOWNER: I'm going off to East Timor this afternoon to spend this evening in Dili  and the best part of tomorrow. I'll be going with the Indonesian Foreign Minister, who's going today as  well, so it's an opportunity for the two countries, which are the most important, in many respects, to the  long term future of East Timor to be represented there and to talk with the East Timorese government.

I'll be meeting with the President and the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and also with  Brigadier Slater, the Australian commander, I'll be meeting with him this evening.

Obviously we're very concerned still about the situation in East Timor. They are - they have worked  through a lot of the political issues, and there'll be an election next year which is an opportunity for  those who don't like the East Timorese government to go out and vote for an alternative, if that's what  they wish for. And we encourage East Timorese to abide by the rule of law and to support the  democratic process, because that's the only long-term future for the country.

We're obviously concerned about the 57 who escaped from the prison. I'll be discussing that with  Brigadier Slater as well as with the East Timorese. The fact is that none of those people has been  recaptured yet; they're proving very hard to find. The Portuguese paramilitary, the gendarmerie, as  well as the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Defence Force and the East Timorese are  looking for them, but at this stage, contrary to a report, they haven't found any of them yet.

It's disturbing that they still haven't tracked them down, but they're doing their best and they'll just  continue with that task. I'm sure, as time goes on, they'll begin to have some success. But it is of  concern to us that people are in prison, either facing serious charges or who have been convicted of  serious offences, are now back out on the loose. This is a country where there are a lot of guns readily  available. Not all guns have been tracked down and handed in, and it concerns us that unless these  people are apprehended this could contribute to instability in East Timor when the situation is, whilst  it's been getting better, the situation is still fairly fragile there.

So, look, Australia has, since 1999, backed East Timor to the hilt. No country has done more for East  Timor than Australia. We have been, as a people, enormously generous to the East Timorese, and we'll  continue to provide them with support. But the East Timorese have to accept responsibility now,  because they're an independent country, for their own affairs, and they have to learn to find solutions

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to their own problems, not just expect the international community indefinitely to solve all those  problems for them.

We'll help, and we'll do what we can to help, and we won't turn our backs on East Timor and we won't  abrogate our responsibilities, people can be sure of that. But on the other hand the East Timorese have  to accept responsibility for their own affairs and work to solve their own problems, not expect us and  the United Nations to fix up all their problems.

QUESTION: Do you reject suggestions that Australian troops are partly to blame for the break out?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: I completely reject those suggestions. Look, the East Timorese must  accept responsibility for their own people and their own decisions and their own behaviour. You  cannot blame Australia or New Zealand or Portugal or Malaysia or the Secretary General of the United  Nations for all the problems of East Timor. An agreement was reached between Brigadier Slater as the  international task force commander there, our international stabilisation force commander there, and  the East Timorese, that the East Timorese would provide the static guards for the prison. The  international force, in that particular zone, would provide broader security in that vicinity.

Of course, this was in order to stop there being attacks on the prison and attempts to get prisoners out  by attacking from the outside. But the fact is that how the prisoners got out, how they managed to get  past the static guards there is a matter of investigation, and I think we shouldn't rush to any  conclusions.

But certainly no one's going to get anywhere by getting into a blame game. The fact is the prisoners  have escaped, that's extremely regrettable, but to suggest that Australia is somehow responsible for  that, I'm afraid that's completely wrong. And it's unhelpful. No country is more supportive of East  Timor; no country has been more supportive of East Timor than Australia, and to blame Australia for  everything that goes wrong in East Timor, that's part of the problem.

I mean the East Timorese have to accept responsibility for their own affairs and manage their own  affairs.

QUESTION: In light of what's happened, is Australia going to reconsider or retain its troop presence  in East Timor?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, the number of troops we have in East Timor isn't a matter for the  Opposition Spokesman on Foreign Affairs, who's suddenly become a, well, of course, he attacks  everybody in the Australian government or the Australian Defence Force willy nilly, you shouldn't  listen to him. You should listen to Brigadier Slater and General Leahy, the Chief of the Army.

We obviously keep a number of troops there needed to do the job. But this, overwhelmingly, is  increasingly, as time goes on, going to become a policing job more than a military job. So the United  Nations Security Council resolution provides for 1,000, over 1,600 international police to be deployed  in East Timor. There are already a lot there, but that's a big increase. And in those circumstances it's

unlikely that as many troops will be needed.

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So I think we'll listen to General Leahy and we'll listen to Brigadier Slater on these matters, not get in  to some sort of rather low-grade party politicking here from somebody who wouldn't have a clue.

QUESTION: Do you acknowledge, though, that the security situation in East Timor is likely to be  fundamentally unstable until the next election?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I think there's going to be - we wouldn't be sending in over 1,600  international police if we and the United Nations and others were happy with the security situation  there. So, look,ipso facto there's a security problem there. And that's why there's a new Security  Council resolution, and that's why the international community is doing what it can to help the East  Timorese.

The number of military who will be involved, as distinct from the police, will depend on the mission.  We won't be leaving more military there than we need. And as the policing presence increases there is  unlikely to be a need to keep as many military, but there's another issue here, and that is that we don't  want to leave the East Timorese with a view that they don't have to take responsibility for their own  country and their own actions. They have to understand that it's not the Australian Defence Force or  the Australian Federal Police or the Secretary General of the United Nations and his representatives  who, at the end of the day, are responsible for East Timor. It's the East Timorese, and so, you know, a  lot of emphasis has to be placed on that argument.

If the East Timorese think that no matter what they do others will always solve their problems for  them, that simply reduces the incentive to solve their own problems and accept full responsibility for  their own destiny. And I think it's responsible for us to place the emphasis on them securing their own  destiny rather than looking to us and to the United Nations to fix all their problems.

QUESTION: So what do you hope to get out of this visit, then? What are you trying to achieve?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, look, I hope very much that we'll be able, me and the Indonesian  Foreign Minister as well, to reinforce our support for East Timor, but I'll be repeating to the East  Timorese a lot of the messages that I'm sending out today. I will be making it clear to the East  Timorese that we're there to help, and we will help, and although the Indonesians obviously don't have

people on the ground there Indonesia has been supportive of the initiatives that we and others and the  United Nations have been taking to help East Timor.

But I will be emphasising that the East Timorese are responsible for their own destiny, not Kofi  Annan, not John Howard, or me, or President Yudhoyono.

QUESTION: In the wake of the break out and East Timor's Prime Minister laying part of the blame  on Australian troops, have you at any point considered cancelling your visit?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, I wouldn't do that. I'm not that kind of a person. I'm endlessly calm.

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QUESTION: Did they ask you to go, Minister, or did the Prime Minister ask you to go, or have you  decided yourself?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, we have made, well, the Prime Minister did a little while ago ask me  and the Indonesian Foreign Minister to go, but if you mean in the context of the break out, no. He, the  Prime Minister, I spoke to the Prime Minister when I was in Brisbane a few weeks ago, and he said  that he very much liked this trilateral meeting to take place as soon as possible. So this is the time  we've been able to fix it up.

QUESTION: Mr Rudd has called for an audit of the adequacy of training of military and police.  What's your response to that?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Training of Australian military and police? I think they're very well  trained.

QUESTION: No, I would imagine training of the…

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I don't think we need any advice from Mr Rudd. I've never known  anybody, in my 22 years in politics, make more cheap party political points. So to give credit where it's  due, I suppose that's the role of the opposition, to make political points. But, seriously, I think it's a  completely different issue here. It's not calling for an audit; the issue here is the retraining and  strengthening of the East Timorese police, the East Timorese police in and around Dili essentially as a  force disintegrated earlier this year, and the challenge is to rebuild that police force. And that will be  one of the tasks of the United Nations policing presence there.

Secondly, as far as the East Timorese military are concerned, the problem here is again - I'm not sure  quite what an audit is going to do, I just don't even have a clue what that would do. I mean the point  here is that we've got, had an East Timorese police force, defence force, out of which about 40% were  sacked by the government. And that was one of the main causes of the instability that we've had to deal  with this year.

Now, the government, the then-government had its arguments for why it did what it did, but obviously  it caused wide spread instability, to dismiss about 40% of the soldiers in a defence force, you can  imagine, is an extraordinarily dramatic thing for any government to do. So those issues are gradually  being, and will still further, have to be addressed by the East Timorese government. I mean we're not  going to be able to fix up those problems for them; they've got to fix up those problems themselves.

QUESTION: How long do you think it will be before East Timor is able to stand on its own?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, it depends what you mean by that. I hope after their election, when  they've been able, democratically, to choose the next government of the country they will settle down  and accept the results of the election, whatever the results may be. For those who are on the losing side  in election, whose candidates don't get elected, or get elected but don't form a majority in the  Parliament, well, like in this country and in other countries around the world they'll have to accept that  is the result of a democratic process.

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But we will have to continue to provide development assistance for quite some years to come, though  you shouldn't underestimate the revenue that's flowing to East Timor from the Timor Sea. They're  actually getting very large flows of revenue now out of the [indistinct] development, so they are  building up money in their trust fund, and they will have more and more resources to spend  themselves.

The challenge for East Timor, well, it doesn't, sort of, directly answer your question, because there's no  simple answer for that, but the challenge for East Timor is for people to accept this point about  responsibility. They've got to be responsible. You might be opposed to someone politically, they might  annoy you politically, but that isn't an excuse to burn down their house. I mean I don't go up to  Brisbane and burn down Mr Rudd's house, or over to Perth and burn down Kim Beazley's house,  because they say deep and dark things about the Australian government.

It's part of the political process, and all of us have got to accept that.

QUESTION: What was your response to Dr [indistinct] concerns about Australia enriching  uranium?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, we haven't made any decision yet about whether we would enrich  uranium or not, but insofar as it became economic to do so and it was possible for us to therefore  increase very substantially the value added for our exports, and maybe it would increase the value  added some fourfold, it's estimated. Then I would have thought that international security would be  better served by enriched uranium coming from a country as secure, as stable, as democratic, and as  responsible as Australia.

I can't think of any better country to shoulder the burdens of reinforcing and strengthening the nuclear  non-proliferation regime, because there isn't any prospect, any time in the future, of an Australian  government of any political complexion being elected which wouldn't be a true champion of the non-proliferation regime. And if you're going to have nuclear power plants, you're going to have nuclear  power here and there around the world, and there are hundreds of nuclear power plants around the  world, if that's the case then you may as well get the uranium from a country which is highly  responsible, like Australia.

And if the economics ever worked for enrichment then the whole question of enriching in a highly  responsible country like Australia would be, in that debate, would have to be considered the great  advantages for the world of enriching in a responsible country like this.

QUESTION: But with Indonesia also considering enriching uranium, are we promoting an arms  race?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: An arms race? No, we are not. We're not promoting an arms race with  anybody. I don't think anyone seriously thinks Australia's into promoting an arms race. You get the  arms race line, we were promoting an arms race because we supported missile defence, that was one of

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the arguments that was thrown at us a few years ago. Mr Beazley was a big one for that kind of  argument. Well, it obviously hasn't happened.

Now he says we're promoting an arms race by considering enriching uranium. I mean enrichment of  uranium is a fact. It's there. And it's much better that it be done in a country which is highly  responsible. For example the Netherlands enriches uranium. It's much better it be done in a country  like that, or for that matter even Australia, than be done in Iran, at the other extreme of the spectrum.  That's a worry, particularly as they haven't fulfilled their obligations under the International Atomic  Energy Agency, and we always have done.

QUESTION: So can you give a reassurance that Australia's uranium won't be used for nuclear  weapons at any stage?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Absolutely, I absolutely can.

QUESTION: Peter Costello this morning called on Australian Muslim leaders to denounce terrorism  and for Islamic migrants to learn English. Can you comment on that?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, I think it is very important that all Australians renounce terrorism,  I mean all Australians. That there isn't any sense of apologising or excusing terrorist actions, be they in  Australia or, importantly, be they overseas. Now, Australian Muslims, Australian Christians,  Australian Jews, whatever they happen to be, Australian atheists, they should all be out there as one  denouncing terrorism.

And people who - if people choose not to denounce terrorism or to excuse terrorism, whatever their,  you know, religion or ethnicity or whatever it may be, well, that draws attention to them, and people  wonder why would somebody not renounce terrorism. So I would call on all people to renounce  terrorism, and that's a very important thing that should be done.

QUESTION: And on Islamic migrants learning English?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: All migrants should speak English. If you come to Australia as a migrant  and you can't speak English then the fact is in those circumstances you're going to be enormously  disadvantaged. This is an English speaking country, everyone knows that.

Migrants who come here and aren't able to learn the language are going to end up becoming alienated  from the mainstream of society. They will never be able to integrate themselves into the normal affairs  of Australia, joining clubs and societies and sports teams and, you know, going to the movies and the  theatre and doing what else you might want to do during the course of your daily life, even going  shopping. It's not going to be much of a life for you if you can't speak English in Australia.

So to be kind is to teach English to people who can't speak English when they come here, or if they're  already here. But I mean, yes, we should focus on English language skills as being an essential  component of migration to Australia.

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QUESTION: In terms of what's happening in London, what's your reaction to yesterday's arrest of  more alleged terror suspects?

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Well, it just shows the, first of all British security forces appear to be  doing a good job. They're finding people and they're able to track them down, and that's obviously  welcome. I mean I felt the most important, I think it was at a school yesterday, but most importantly  tracking down those people who, allegedly, were threatening to blow up aircraft, was an extraordinary  achievement by the British security forces. But it shows the work goes on, and it's going to require  long-term strength and courage and commitment to make sure these people are eventually defeated. It's  not going to end any time soon.

ENDS.



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