> > Times Higher Education Supplement, 10 September, 1999
> > Ex-US president Jimmy
> > Carter, now working for the UN, said of East Timor: "The Indonesian
> >military
> > and other government agencies are supporting, directing and arming
> > pro-integration militias to create a climate of fear and intimidation."
> > Donald Hagger is the administrator of the Sterling Group of universities.
> > >From 1980 to 1987 he was a World Bank-funded adviser to the Indonesian
> > government.
Jimmy 'human rights' Carter's hypocrisy is in time-honored US tradition of Dwight Eisenhower's warning about military-industrial complex in his farewell presidential address, Robert MacNamara's crocodile tears for starving in Third World at press conference announcing that he was leaving World Bank, and Hyman Rickover's concern about danger of nuclear weapons upon his resignation as Naval chief who built nuclear navy.
Carter administration increased US weapons shipments to Indonesia, facilitating the terror and massacre in East Timor to which Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger had given the greenlight. Moreover, US voted against UN General Assembly resolution condemning Indonesian invasion and occupation each year of Carter's term (1977-1980). This resolution was on GA agenda between 1975-1982 with US abstaining the first time and voting consistent *nay* after that. US ambassador to UN during Ford presidency, Daniel Moynihan, has indicated that he was told to use any measures necessary to make ineffective the UN response to East Timor.
US role in East Timor cannot be separated from its role in undermining Portugese Revolution of 1974-75. Not until overthrow of dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar did Portugal initiate de-colonization (East Timor first appeared on UN de-colonization list in 1960). Salazar had ignored UN condemnations of his colonial policies and continued to use military force in Angola, Mozambique, and Cape Verde & Guinea- Bissau. The military coup that ousted Salazar unleashed multiple progressive social movements and the new regime moved quickly to the left. There were Communist ministers in West European cabinet for the first time since 1947.
Secretary of State Kissinger used same CIA tactics to destabilize Portugal that he had used previously against Salvador Allende and Popular Unity in Chile and that he was using against Michael Manley and People's National Party in Jamaica - channeling money to conservative groups and parties, disseminating disinformation though the media, working with religious officialdom (US covert operations in Portugal occurred at the very time such activities were being investigated in Congress). The left-ward march of the revolution would wane, the Soviets would opt for continuing detente, moderate Socialists would win parliamentary elections, the new government would abandon pledges to assist in transition to East Timorese sovereignty, and Portugal would remain with the West.
The Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), the more conservative partner in coalition that was to mark East Timor's independent statehood broke with the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETLIN) - a social-democratic formation committed to social justice, economic redistribution, and mixed economy - and seized power. FRETLIN, which had 'inherited' weapons from Portugal's military as it withdrew, gained control. Claiming that its intervention would restore peace and stability in, but actually motivated by desire to eliminate leftist-FRETLIN and US Cold War policies that required 'allies' in war against communism, offered military funding, training, and weapons to such counties, and maintained profitable 'trading partners' and investment locations, Indonesia invaded in December 1975. Michael Hoover