



MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS  HON ALEXANDER DOWNER, MP



TRANSCRIPTION: PROOF COPY E & OE



DATE: 14 September 2004  TITLE: Question  and  Answer  session  following  speech  to  the  Australian  Institute  of   International Affairs, “Building Australia's Future in a Changing World”



CONVENOR:  So, as I said, Mr Downer has agreed to take some questions from the audience.  Could I have  the first question?  Brian.

BRIAN EVERINGHAM - AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:  Thank you, Mr Downer, and thank you for making time out after a very hectic couple of days.   Brian Everingham, I'm the counsellor for the Australian Institute for International Affairs.

I take it you won't answer hypotheticals, but how would you … do you envision Australia  dealing with the conflicts that may or may not occur between Australia and China and Taiwan  vis-ÃÂ -vis the relationship with America?

DOWNER:  Well, I keep saying this and despite the fact that people interpret and reinterpret my comments,  my position has always been the same and that is that if there were to be a conflict between  Taiwan and China that's a hypothetical situation and we're not sure what we would do in that  situation because we don't know what the scenario would be.  And I can't think that it would  do anything but create a train wreck in our relations (laughs) with many countries if we were  to start in diplomacy going around and talking about hypothetical scenarios, particularly in  relation to war wherever that may be, so we intend not to do that.

But we make this point about China and Taiwan. We hope that the status questions can be  resolved through peaceful negotiations and we urge that.  We've said to the Taiwanese, look,  flirting with independence is flirting with very grave danger.  We don't want you to do that.   Taiwan is best served by sticking with the status quo.

We say to China we don't want China to try to resolve these status issues through military  action.  And despite what some people claim, I made that point to the Chinese when I was in  Beijing recently and we've made … of course, I don't go to Taiwan as the Foreign Minister  but … because we have a one China policy, but that point is made on the Australian  government's behalf to the Taiwanese on … the point about Taiwan is made to the Taiwanese  on many occasions.

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So I think anybody who chooses to look at the material on what we say on these issues rather  than get excited will see that there is a clear pattern in how we handle this issue.

But what I might just say over and above all of that is that I don't really agree with my  counterpart Kevin Rudd who came back from China talking of the W word in relation to  Taiwan as though China and Taiwan were on the threshold of war.  My own judgment is that

the military build up in China directed towards Taiwan is all about China sending a message  to Taiwan that it doesn't want to see Taiwan move down the path of independence.

Now, whether it's fair or not, and you can debate this, the Chinese are concerned that Chen  Shui-bian might start moving down that path.  And so we hope that these issues can be solved  and resolved peacefully and on balance I'm not in the W word school.  I'm optimistic that they  will be resolved peacefully.  That's the impression I get from talking to the Chinese, as I've  done recently, not just with a think tank but with the leaders of the country and also from  what I know of discussions by people we've asked to talk to the Taiwanese by discussions  they've had with the Taiwanese.

MILLER:  Thank you.  Alison.

FEMALE SPEAKER:  Alison (indistinct), Mr Downer.  I noticed the other day that the Prime Minister said that  Australians are far safer since the invasion of Iraq.  Given that we've had to move our  embassy in Manila and that our embassy in Jakarta, even though it's located behind a blast  mound with toughened glass, has to be moved again, as you've just announced, within the  next couple of years, do you think that the Prime Minister's remarks need to be revised at all?

DOWNER:  No, but I don't think I'd ever agree with you on anything from what I read of what you write  and say, but I certainly don't agree with that proposition.  I believe that leaving Saddam  Hussein in power and, of course, giving him an enormous victory would have done  international security immense damage.

I have no truck with somebody who slaughters his own people, who uses chemical weapons  against his own people, who defies Chapter 7 Mandatory Security Council Resolutions, who  invades his neighbours, creates a war with Iran in which a million people were said to have  died, attacked and invaded and overran Kuwait and trashed much of the country - I've been to  Kuwait and seen the damage that he did - fired missiles into Israel and into Saudi Arabia.

I'm sorry, that is beyond the bounds of legitimacy for me and any leader who has behaved in  that way I think is an enormous threat to international security and I think we are a country  which and a world which is a little bit safer because of the passing of Saddam Hussein and his  regime.

But that's not to say I don't think we have big problems still to deal with in relation to  terrorism and I've explained earlier, I don't know whether … you know, I'm not asking



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everyone to agree with me.  People are entitled to disagree.  But I don't for a minute think that  al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah were set up because of Iraq.

I think they were set up for completely different objectives and I think they continue to pursue  those objectives by the most vicious and vile means.  And I think if we, and by we I mean  countries like ours but also the governments of South East Asia and some of the good  governments there in the Middle East, if we show weakness, defeatism, or lack courage in the  face of these organisations then we will empower them and I don't intend to do that.

MILLER:  Next question.

CLAIRE MOSS - AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:  Thank you.  Claire Moss (ph.sp.), I'm an Institute member.  I'm interested that you say you  have no truck with a regime like Saddam Hussein to justify the coalition of the willing's  invasion.  But you're also prepared to organise a free trade agreement, or at least discuss it  with China whose human rights record would certainly be as bad as the Saddam Hussein's.   What is the difference?  What's the justification?

DOWNER:  Well, that's an easy question to answer.  I couldn't imagine that I would remotely agree with a  proposition that the regime of President Hu Jintao's human rights record is remotely like  Saddam Hussein's.  We have a human rights dialogue with China.  We have concerns which  we raise with them at our annual human rights dialogue. There are a lot of issues and you'll be  familiar with what they are.

But to compare that with a man who slaughtered his own people and used chemical weapons  against his own people and ran the most brutal dictatorship that's wrong.  China is not  remotely comparable with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.



MILLER:  Question, Rob?

ROB KELLY - AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:  Rob Kelly, a member of the Institute.  You mentioned that in the last eight years there'd been  a doubling of the investment in ASIS, could you give us a feel for how much of that  investment's gone into the frontline recruitment and training of the intelligence people on the  ground?

There is a perception that an awful lot of investment's gone into, if you like, the bureaucracy  within ASIS in terms of managerial types now very much being in the upper echelons rather  than a predominance of the intelligence trained people.

DOWNER:  I've been the Minister for ASIS for eight and a half years we haven't increased money for  ASIS for that reason. When I became the Minister I thought … there's sort of a history to this



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coming out of royal commissions and the Sheraton Hotel raids in Melbourne and all of that  which … so I found ASIS a depleted and far too small organisation.

But I don't have any interest in building up the bureaucracy in ASIS.  I have an interest in  building up the number of intelligence officers there are and expanding the scope of ASIS  operations, if I could put it to you that way without going any further than I could possibly  allow myself to go.

And we are endeavouring at the moment to … and there was an ad in the newspapers last  week for … to entice young people to join ASIS.  We are endeavouring to expand the number  of intelligence officers as fast as we can.  Now, let me qualify that, as we can.  It is actually  quite difficult to recruit the right sort of people in increasing numbers quickly.  It takes a good  deal of time.

So, unfortunately we can't expand the number of intelligence officers and the roles that they  would play as fast as we would like but we are doing it as fast as we can.  And by can I mean  also maintaining the integrity and the quality control in the organisation, because obviously  with an organisation as sensitive as that you have to do it.



One of the things I did, by the way, with ASIS was to put it on a statutory basis back in two  thousand and … it was before the last election … just before the last election in 2001.  So  ASIS has, if you like, come in from the cold.  It's there.  People know what it does.  There's a

parliamentary committee which has some oversight responsibilities for ASIS.

And I think a lot of the, you know, conspiracy theories about what ASIS might or might not  be doing, you know, is ASIS spying on the Labor Party or something like that?  A lot of those  kind of conspiracies have disappeared which is excellent because there aren't any conspiracies.

And we've done a lot in the last three years particularly to build public confidence in ASIS.  I  don't want to build the bureaucracy of ASIS in Canberra.  I want to build the operational role  of ASIS internationally and I think we are doing a pretty good job in building it up.



MILLER:  Alan.

ALLAN GYNGELL - LOWY INSTITUTE:  Allan Gyngell from the Lowy Institute, Minister.  One of the important decisions the  Australian government's going to have to make before the end of the year is how to deal with  Iran's increasingly obvious nuclear ambitions.  What do you think the lessons we've learnt  from the handling of India and Pakistan and Iraq will be for the way the international  community deals with this problem?

DOWNER:  Well, of course, the thing about India and Pakistan is they weren't members of the Nuclear  Non-Proliferation Treaty so there was a different legal framework under which, if you like,  they operated.  Well, it wasn't a legal framework under which they operated.



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I made a big issue back then in, was it 1998, about India and then Pakistan's nuclear testing  and we put as much energy as we possibly could into trying to talk them out of it.  But there  was enormous domestic political momentum in both of those countries for nuclear testing and  being nuclear states.  I regard it as a disappointment, though, that the international community  wasn't able to stop that happening.

But the Clinton Administration, too, at the time put a lot of energy into trying to stop the  nuclear testing.  So, you know, I'm not going around criticising anybody in anyway, that's a  decision that's made.

In the case of Iran, it is a member of the NPT and therefore the IAEA and we had a visit here  recently by the secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, Rowhani, and I spent a  very long time, many, many hours, talking to him in Canberra through the day and the night

about this question.

And what we as governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, board members of the  International Atomic Energy Agency, need to do is absolutely need to make sure that Iran not  only meets its obligations under the NPT and under the IAEA agreement, and that is have  appropriate transparency and the like, but the complication with Iran is this whole issue of  reprocessing and enrichment.

And we've made it clear to the Iranians that whilst they do claim that they have some legal  cover for enrichment that in this post 9/11 environment the international community does not  want to see Iran enriching uranium.  And that the best thing that Iran could do in terms of  building international confidence in its nuclear program, that is that what they say is certain to  be the case that they won't develop a nuclear weapons program, the best way to do that is for  the Iranians either to import enriched uranium that they might need for nuclear power  purposes from Russia or import that enriched uranium from the joint project or the project  they have an investment in in France.

If they were to do that then the international community would feel more comfortable, but if  they are to go ahead with their own in-house enrichment program then the international  community is going to be deeply uncomfortable about that. And that's not just us or some of  our … the most hardline ally we have on this issue is the Americans, but the so-called … well,  you would know about this, the EU3, the French, the Germans and the British who have been  dealing with Iran, who felt that they had persuaded Iran to institute a moratorium on  enrichment and now the Iranians have abandoned that moratorium. That's a big concern.

This is an issue that'll be discussed with a good degree of passion at the board of governors  meeting of the IAEA later this month and then I think more importantly is an issue that by  November, I think is the next board of governors meeting, by then could very much lead to a  referral to the Security Council.  But that's still a work in progress.



MILLER:  Chris.

CHRIS JOCELYN - AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:



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Minister, Chris Jocelyn (ph.sp.), a member of the Institute.  Would you care to comment on  what you see as the way forward in our relationship with East Timor taking into account the  energy issues and the social and economic issues that flow from that?

DOWNER:  Yeah, I mean, first of all we're proud of the role we played in helping the East Timorese  achieve their aspiration of becoming an independent country.  I think that's been quite a  traumatic issue for Australia regardless of people's political … domestic political perspectives  over many years and there are all sorts of different roles that people have played.  Geoff, I  can't remember what role you played in all of this but there's bound to be some Geoff Miller  stuff there buried away.

MILLER:  Stuffed in one of the volumes.

DOWNER:  Yes (laughs), one of the volumes.  Anyway, we are in the process now of, if you like,  negotiating the third tranche of the negotiations with East Timor over the oil and gas reserves  in the Timor Sea.  The first was the Timor Sea Treaty that we negotiated, which maintained  the joint development area but gave … we gave East Timor ninety per cent of the revenue  from the joint development area, which was, if I may say so, a pretty generous thing for us to  do.

We then as the second tranche, we negotiated the International Unitisation Agreement in  relation to Greater Sunrise and we reached agreement, which I signed in Dili in the presence  of Prime Minister Alkatiri.  And the East Timorese have nevertheless, whilst they signed the  agreement, refused to ratify it, or more to the point, the government has refused to put it to the  parliament for ratification, which has been a little bit of a disappointment for us but …  because we have taken the steps necessary for ratification in our parliament.

And the third phase is the, what I would like to feel will be the final negotiation on permanent  boundaries, permanent delimitation and on the final decisions on the allocation of revenues  from the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea.



So we have another round of those negotiations about to start and we, as a result of a meeting  - or actually it was two meetings - that Jose Ramos-Horta, the Foreign Minister, and I had on  this issue, one meeting in Jakarta and one in Canberra.  We have a framework for negotiations  and I hope that these negotiations can be concluded by the end of the year and that's what  we're going to try to achieve.

I don't want to get into the minutia of what they're offering and we're offering and where we're  at in those negotiations.  For our part we've always said that we will negotiate privately not  publicly.  I know that they've run a bit of a campaign against us publicly and, you know, a lot  of abuse has come flying our way, but, you know, that's not really made any difference.   We've got to do the right thing not just by East Timor but by Australia and there are a lot of  complex issues involved there.





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We have significant maritime boundaries with Indonesia and with Papua New Guinea, even  with New Zealand, France in the context of New Caledonia and so what we do with East  Timor has implications for those questions.  That's, of course, not an issue for East Timor but  it is for us and we have to weigh that against their understandable desire for more rapid  economic development and we're certainly on their side in terms of being generous and  helping them with economic development …



[Break in transmission due to recording tape change]

MALE SPEAKER:  ... I’d like to ask you about the situation in Darfur.  It's been described ... sorry.  The situation  in Darfur's been described as genocide by Colin Powell, why is it that ten years after Rwanda  that the international community still cannot prevent genocides in Africa?

DOWNER:  Yes, can I just make this point to you, I'm not sure ... the US Congress described it as  genocide, I'll have to check my recollection about what Colin Powell's actually said, but the  point anyway is well made.  This debate about whether it's genocide or whether it's just mass  murder seems to me a very empty debate, and by the way, I'm equally against both of them  and with the same passion and I bet you are too.

So I feel very strongly about your question and I think one of the great catastrophes for the  United Nations and for the international community was Rwanda in 1994.  I thought Bill  Clinton's comments recently in that Denton interview on that were very interesting and I sort  of ... my heart went out to Bill Clinton a bit over that, but it was a terrible failure of the  international community.

And I have to say to you I think as the international community we're not doing terribly well  in relation to Darfur.  But at least now, somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand deaths  later, the international ... the Security Council is on the case.  And I think the British and the  Americans in particular have been very robust in trying to get security council action to deal  with the, you know, the activities of the Janjaweed and put pressure on the Sudanese  government to stop them supporting the Janjaweed and trying to push for a satisfactory  settlement.  We'll see how the implementation of the latest Security Council resolution goes.

I don't speak today with enormous confidence about bringing the violence to an end in Sudan  in the very short term, but I hope that the international community here again will take  seriously a mandatory Security Council resolution, not just advisory resolutions but  mandatory resolution, and make sure that the will of the Security Council is properly  implemented.

Now, I should finish by saying that they're ... because that makes you wonder, are troops  going to be send in there?  The emphasis has been placed on the African Union to ... which  wants to help and is helping, and we've said we'd be prepared to provide some assistance to  them and some logistical support. We could even imagine that we would a small number of  military personnel there to help.



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But the emphasis has got to be on the African Union's forces being able to do the job and help  to monitor ceasefires and a cessation of hostilities.  And I'm just telling you today I'm hoping  that's going to work but it's a bad thing that for fifteen months so many people have been  slaughtered and so little has been done to even try to stop it.

MILLER:  Victor?

MALE SPEAKER:  Minister Downer, you mentioned germ warfare.  Now, the United States actually was selling  the germs to Saddam Hussein in the late '80s, including bacillus anthracis for anthrax.  I  understand with John Howard being in New York 2011 ... 2001, standing behind … or going  all the way with global (indistinct), Bush as well, but if we know that ... they say about fifteen  of the people involved with the perpetrations of the destruction of the World Trade Centre  towers were all from Saudi Arabia.

I've heard the litany of excuses you gave for the entrance into Iraq, but why does nobody ...  the circle of ... coalition of the willing, why does nobody go into or speak about or have an  incursion into Saudi Arabia, the true person who was involved with the ... the persons  involved with what happened at the World Trade Centre towers?

DOWNER:  Well, I don't know that anyone's blaming the King or the government of Saudi Arabia for it,  they're Saudi Arabian nationals.  If an Australian commits an atrocity somewhere in the world,  and regrettably occasionally it happens, I very much hope that the Australian government and  the good law abiding people of Australia won't be held themselves all responsible for that,  some crime committed by some errant Australian somewhere else in the world.

It's true what you say, Osama bin Laden, although originally Yemeni, is in effect a Saudi and  there ... a lot of the attackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabians, most of them were Saudi Arabian  nationals.  It's a very different thing from saying that the Saudi Arabian government was  behind them, I don't know that I've ever heard ... I don't think even Michael Moore's made that  claim, although (laughs) he's come pretty close to it.  I don't know.

But I think in relation to Saudi Arabia the important thing for all of us to do is what we have  been doing and that is to encourage Saudi Arabia to be much more decisive in the action that  it takes against al-Qaeda and like organizations, and I don't just mean action on the ground  within Saudi Arabia.  And since, by the way, the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia over the last  couple of years, which have killed many Saudis, particularly Saudi security forces, the Saudi  government has been much more robust in confronting these organisations.



But it's very important to focus, too, on the role of Saudi money and the promotion through  Saudi money of Wahhabism, and the promotion of it through certain mosques and also  through madrassas, through schools.  And the world didn't do enough about ... didn't worry  enough about that and is worrying much more about it now and as a result has put a lot of

pressure on Saudi Arabia to take much more decisive action to make sure that these madrassas,



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in particular some mosques but particularly these madrassas, don't become breeding grounds  for terrorists, for al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda related terrorists.

Now, the Saudis have put in place a much more stringent monitoring system for the  movement of money in and out of Saudi ... we're really talking here about out, we know how  it goes in, through oil sales, but out of Saudi Arabia.  And so progress has been made, whether  anybody could claim that a hundred per cent progress has been made that would be heroic but  there has been good progress made and the Saudi government has become a lot more  cooperative.



MILLER:  One last question?

DOWNER:  Yes.

MILLER:  Jim.

JIM AINSELL - AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:  Jim Ainsell (ph.sp), Institute.  Minister, just regarding the acts of terrorism against foreigners  and particularly Australians in Indonesia.  Of course the Australian media, not surprisingly,  gives a lot of attention to the injury and deaths suffered by Australians when these things  happen, this is not surprising, it is the Australian media.  But they also generally do report the  deaths and injuries suffered by Indonesians and these are, of course, on a much, much greater  scale than happens to the Australians.

Now, if this continues one might expect Indonesians would begin to discredit the terrorist  groups and cease to support them unless the reporting in Indonesian is ignoring the death and  injury suffered by the Indonesians, or unless the terrorists are successfully using a logic which  says that if the Australians and other foreigners were not here influencing us then we wouldn't  have acts of terrorism so Indonesians wouldn't suffer so therefore it's all the Australians' or  foreigners' fault.  What ... how is this sort of moral dilemma developing in Indonesia?

DOWNER:  I don't think there's a moral dilemma.  I agree with you that inevitably the Australian media  are going to focus on Australian casualties or near casualties, as is the case in the Jakarta ...  with the Jakarta bombing, well, that's normal.  I mean, you'll find that with every country and  that's reflects the thinking of ... attitudes of our own people.  It's not a criticism of our media,  which doesn't do a bad job in terms of foreign policy and international relations.  I think our  media's much better than ... whatever you think of our media, it's much better than most  around the world on international relations.

In Indonesia, well, you make a good point. I think Indonesians are enormously opposed to the  terrorists.  I think there are two hundred and - what? - two hundred and twenty million  Indonesians, how many people in Indonesia would subscribe to the extremist views of  organisations like Jemaah Islamiah?  I mean, a few thousand.  Out or two hundred and twenty



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million people it's a fraction of the population, it's just a small number of people well armed  can do an enormous amount of damage.

And the fact that Indonesians have been killed in Bali - a lot of those victims in Bali would  have been Hindus, of course - Indonesians were killed only ... I think one Dutchman might  have been killed, but otherwise Indonesians were killed in the Marriott bombing, and  Indonesians, of course, nine or ten Indonesians have been killed in the Jakarta embassy  bombing.

This has an enormous impact on Indonesians.  They are outraged about this and it comes back  to what I was saying about Saudi Arabia.  The Saudis, while some ... I mean, some of them  would have some sympathy for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, I'll grant that, have been  pretty outraged when Saudis themselves have been killed by these terrorist organisations.  So  I think also we should be fair to the Indonesians.

I think our media on the whole is but I think we ... on the whole is, but we should be fair to  the Indonesians.  They have been making a significant effort to confront terrorism.  They have  put a lot of energy and a lot of resources into rounding up the people responsible for these  attacks and, as you know, they've arrested and convicted over thirty people in response ... who  are responsible for the Bali bombing.

So I think they've been enormously cooperative with us, they've been great friends of ours on  this issue.  Let me put it to you that way, they've been great friends to us, the Indonesians,  over the issue of terrorism in recent times.  So I don't think … you know, there is a need for  more support for them and capacity building, if I could put it that way, that's why we've  established the Jakarta centre for law enforcement cooperation.  That's why we are working  with them so strongly.



But I don't think in Indonesian there are many people who have much truck with terrorism,  and perhaps I could last of all use as my evidence the parliamentary elections they had a little  while ago.  When you look at how few politicians with extremist sympathies were elected in  those elections, or ... on the twentieth of September, that's this Sunday, the Indonesian ...  second round of the Indonesian presidential election is going to take place.

Well, you know, you've got the choice of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or Megawati  Soekarnoputri, and these are both moderate and strongly anti-terrorist players, both of them.  Whoever wins is going to be very, very opposed to terrorism, you can be absolutely sure of  that and I've spoken to both of them in the last few days.

MILLER:  Thank you very much.

[Applause]

ENDS…………………………………………….September 14 2004

