APSNet for 20060703
Austral Peace and Security Network (APSNet)
Bi-weekly report from the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, Australia.
Monday 3 July 2006
- East Timor: Ramos Horta urges Australia to lead UN Force
- Aust-Indonesia Security Treaty: Beyond the Personal
- Australian Foreign Policy: Messy Times ahead for this Ragtag Empire
- Australia’s other War in Iraq
- Small Arms: Just what is doing all the Killing?
- North Korea: Nelson right to show Restraint
- PNG Declines to accommodate Papuan Asylum Seekers
- Afghanistan and its Future
Policy Forum: Discussion of “The Proliferation Security Initiative: Coming in from the Cold” – Comments by Mark Valencia and a response by Ron Huisken
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Ramos Horta urges Australia to lead UN Force, Age, 2006-07-03
Mr. Ramos Horta has called for Australia to lead UN peacekeepers in East Timor. “The security situation has significantly improved compared to when the Australians first arrived,” Mr. Ramos Horta said, “but the situation is still very precarious”. “If we do have a problem breaking out in remote areas . . . I prefer that we have robust army here with helicopters to quell any problems.”
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East Timor Since Independence, Dennis Shoesmith, Rob Wesley Smith, James Dunn, Tim Anderson, Rear Vision, ABC Radio National, 206-07-02
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The Big Question Now Is Does the Country Actually Need an Army?, Hamish McDonald, SMH, 2006-07-01
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Missing Evidence of 1999 Timor Violence Recovered, AFP, Ninemsn, 2006-07-01
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Beyond the Personal, Paul Kelly, Australian, 2006-07-01
Howard and Yudhoyono agreed that a new bilateral security treaty, a different version of the Keating-Suharto treaty, will be finalised before year’s end. It is, however, an uphill battle because of the different and distrustful political cultures.
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Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia on Maintaining Security, signed Jakarta, December 18, 1995, entered into force July 15, 1996, abrogated by Indonesia, September 16, 1999
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National Interest Analysis of Agreement with Indonesia on Maintaining Security, NIA 1996/19, 21/5/1996
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Messy Times ahead for this Ragtag Empire, Peter Hartcher, SMH, 2006-06-30
Australia has acquired an accidental empire. Quite inadvertently, we find ourselves providing a de facto guarantee of stability, enforced at gunpoint, to the small states of the South Pacific and South-East Asia. Yet just as we acquired this ad hoc empire by chance, we have no systematic approach for what to do about it.
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Australia’s Other War In Iraq, Richard Baker, Age, 2006-07-03
The Howard Government used Australia’s support for the US in Iraq as a bargaining chip to protect the multibillion-dollar wheat trade with Baghdad. Documents show that more than six months before the outbreak of war, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer suggested that military support for the US in Iraq would benefit Australia’s commercial position.
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Just what is doing all the Killing? Warwick McFadyen, Age, 2006-07-03
In the past three years, 1 million people have died worldwide, not in large mushroom clouds of apocalypse, but in the pop-pop-pop of small-arms fire. It is estimated that 1000 people a day are killed by small arms. Here is the monster of humanity: easy to hold, easy to carry, easy to shoot, easy to murder and maim. It is the pistol, the rifle, the machine-gun.
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Small Arms Survey, Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, 2006 [Web site]
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PNG Gunmen Choked By Australia’s Bullet Restrictions, Philip Alpers, University of Sydney, 2005-04-21
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Nelson right to show Restraint, Brian Toohey, AFR*, 2006-07-01
When asked if he would support a pre-emptive strike on North Korea to stop it going ahead with a missile launch, the Defence Minister said a pre-emptive strike would “quite rightly, be seen as a hostile act against North Korea”. The Prime Minister went much further, supporting claims that the US was entitled to shoot down another country’s unarmed missile during a normal test flight. This is a radical departure from international norms.
* Subscription required. -
PNG Declines to accommodate Papuan Asylum Seekers, Asia Pacific News, ABC, 2006-07-02
Papua New Guinea has reportedly turned down requests from Australia to take in asylum seekers from the Indonesian province of Papua while their refugee applications are processed by Canberra. Under the Australian government’s so-called “Pacific Solution”, asylum seekers who arrive illegal in Australia by boat have been transferred to detention centres on Nauru or on Manus Island in PNG.
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Afghanistan and its Future, Ahmed Rashid, Eurasianet, 2006-06-26
Five years after Western countries promised Afghans to rebuild their country, Afghanistan is on the brink, facing its worst crisis since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001.
Austral Policy Forum 06-13D: Discussion of “The Proliferation Security Initiative: Coming in from the Cold” – Comments by Mark Valencia and a response by Ron Huisken
Valencia says
“Huisken jumps to the conclusion that ‘the PSI appears to be maturing into a useful and accepted counter-proliferation measure’. The sad fact is that the PSI and its ancillary measures have done little or nothing to restrict the movement of WMD and closely related materials on North Korean, Iranian or other ‘outsiders’ flagged ships and planes”. Huisken replies, “I suspect that the major payoff from the PSI is not in the sharpening of maritime, air and land interdiction capacities and skills but in the pressures it has generated backward down the chain of national practices that allow non-proliferation policy objectives to be breached or undermined.”
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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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APSNet is a partner publication to:
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SEAPSNet: Southeast Asia Peace and Security Network.
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NAPSNet: The Northeast Asia Peace and Security Network.
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AESNet: The Nautilus Institute Asian Energy Security Network.