APSNet Semi-Weekly Bulletin, June 15, 2006

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APSNet for 20060615

Austral Peace and Security Network (APSNet)

Bi-weekly report from the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, Australia.

Thursday 15 June 2006

  1. Australia Resists UN Takeover of Timor Security
  2. East Timor: The Traumatic Birth of a Nation
  3. Indonesia: Treaty Won’t Bring True Accord
  4. West Has Been Helping Itself, Not Afghanistan
  5. US Calls on Canberra to Uncover Spy Report
  6. Australia Spends Up Big on Defence
  7. Improved Military Satellite Communications for Defence
  8. Australia and Turkey Sign Defence Cooperation Agreement

Austral Policy Forum 06-20A: The Real Pacific Solution: A NATO for Asia – Nick Bisley

  1. Australia Resists UN Takeover of Timor Security, Mark Coultan, Age, 2006-06-15

    Australia’s ambassador to the UN, Robert Hill, told the Security Council it would be better for the UN to focus on other issues while the multinational force, led by Australia, took care of security. East Timor’s Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, in a speech read on his behalf to the Security Council, said a UN force was essential to “reduce political and diplomatic tensions”.

  2. The Traumatic Birth of a Nation, Mark Byrne, Online Opinion, 2006-06-08

    Independent research on East Timor for the Commission for Reception Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) estimates that the number of conflict-related deaths between 1974 and 1999 was a minimum of 102,800 (18,600 killings and 84,200 abnormal deaths due to hunger and illness) and as many as 183,000 out of a total population of well under a million.

     

  3. Treaty Won’t Bring True Accord, Geoffrey Barker, AFR*, 2006-06-15

    Prime Minister John Howard and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono are set to commit themselves to a security treaty being developed in Canberra and Jakarta. The question is, why bother? Two key questions given the short, unhappy history of the first Australia-Indonesia security treaty are: why have both countries revived the issue so soon, and what is different from the Keating treaty?
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  4. West Has Been Helping Itself, Not Afghanistan, William Maley, SMH, 2006-06-15

    The challenge for Australia as it deploys more troops is to redefine its mission. The continuing conflict in southern Afghanistan is proving to be very nasty indeed. Australia is returning to a theatre of operations which it had earlier abandoned. The Bush Administration in early 2002 blocked the expansion of the International Security Assistance Force beyond Kabul. This, more than any other single development, disrupted the momentum of Afghanistan’s transition.

     

  5. US Calls on Canberra to Uncover Spy Report, Michael McKenna, Australian, 2006-06-13

    US Assistant Federal Attorney Ken Sorenson said he wanted the report, completed in April, by former inspector-general of intelligence and security Ron McLeod, before the September trial of engineer Noshir Gowadia. Mr Gowadia is facing 60 years’ jail if convicted of selling B2 Stealth bomber technology, which he helped develop for the US military, to eight unnamed foreign powers and corporations.

  6. Australia Spends Up Big on Defence, Brendan Nicholson, Age, 2006-06-14

    Australia is in the top 15 spenders on defence, says the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. They are, in declining order: the US, Britain, France, Japan, China, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Spain and Israel. Defence spending in the Howard Government has risen in real terms by 37 per cent from $10.6 billion in 1995-96 to $19.6 billion in the May 2006 budget.

  7. Improved Military Satellite Communications for Defence, DMO, On Target, June 2006

    The Australian Defence Force (ADF) will be improving its satellite communications capability under a phase of the Military Satellite Communications project worth about $50 million. During this phase, Defence will investigate building a new satellite communications ground station in Western Australia.

     

  8. Australia and Turkey Sign Defence Cooperation Agreement, Defence Media Release CPA 116/06, 2006-06-13

    The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, and the Commander of the Turkish Armed Forces, General Hilmi Özkök, today signed a defence cooperation agreement between the two nations. Air Chief Marshal Houston said the agreement would strengthen the defence relationship between Australia and Turkey.

Austral Policy Forum 06-20A: The Real Pacific Solution: A NATO for Asia – Nick Bisley

Nick Bisley of Monash University writes that recent security crises in the Asia-Pacific region “illustrate the institutional limits of security in the region and the pressing need to rethink the broader basis of regional security and more specifically, the nature of the American alliance system.”Bisley argues that, “security in the region requires a multidimensional approach of the kind which the alliance system cannot deliver due to its military bias. The regional security environment, with its blend of old-fashioned power politics and non-traditional transnational threats, requires something which can provide the military heft of an alliance system with the diplomatic and logistical capacity of an international organization.”

 

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Austral Peace and Security Network is issued late on Mondays and Thursdays (AEST) by the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.

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