APSNet Semi-Weekly Bulletin, February 8, 2007

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APSNet for 20070208

Austral Peace and Security Network (APSNet)

Twice weekly report from the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, Australia.

Thursday 8 February 2007

  1. No Matter who’s the Boss, BIN in Need of Reform
  2. Alkatiri Cleared of Timor Assassin Squad Accusation
  3. Newsman Shot after Surrendering: Balibo Witness
  4. President Bush’s FY 2008 Defense Budget Submission
  5. Mercenaries are Second Largest Force in Iraq: UN official
  6. Iraq, Bush and Australia
  7. Afghanistan Receives Australian Police in Drug Fight
  8. Cracks in Defence Let Criminals in: Security Report
  9. Indonesia: Exclusive Bird Flu Deal a Setback to Control

Austral Policy Forum 07-03A – Guns for the Palace Guard in Honiara: We Should Worry – Philip Alpers

  1. No Matter Who’s the Boss, BIN in Need of Reform, R.B. Hobir, Jakarta Post, 2007-02-07

    The intelligence community has been split over who deserves the top National Intelligence Agency (BIN) post. One side says BIN, has to be led by a senior military officer. This camp is of the view that security threats to Indonesia are expected to come from within. A second group insists that BIN has to be led by a civilian. This group is of the view that now is an era of civilian supremacy.

  2. Alkatiri Cleared of Timor Assassin Squad Accusation, Lindsay Murdoch, Age, 2007-02-06

    Prosecutors have cleared former East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri of allegations he was involved in arming a hit squad to kill political rivals, opening the way for him to make a political comeback at elections this year.

  3. Newsman Shot after Surrendering: Balibo Witness, Hamish McDonald, Age, 2007-02-07

    Former Indonesian information minister Yunus Yosfiah gunned down Channel Nine cameraman Brian Peters as he tried to surrender in East Timor in 1975, a witness told an inquest yesterday. Speaking from his home in Indonesia, Mr Yosfiah denied ordering the killings and said he had never seen the five Australians.

  4. President Bush’s FY 2008 Defense Budget Submission, Department of Defense, 2007-02-05 [PDF, Primary Source]

    President Bush’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 budget requests $481.4 billion in discretionary authority for the Department of Defense base budget, an 11.3 percent increase over the projected enacted level for FY 2007, for real growth of 8.6 percent; and $141.7 billion to continue the fight in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in FY 2008.

  5. Mercenaries are Second Largest Force in Iraq: UN official, AFP, Yahoo News, 2007-02-03

    Between 30,000 and 50,000 mercenaries are working in Iraq, making them the second largest military force there after the occupying US. This “is a new manifestation of the use of mercenaries that has caught the US by surprise”, Spain’s Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, a member of the

  6. Iraq, Bush and Australia, Rod Lyon, Policy Briefs, ASPI, 2007-01-30

    How will Bush’s new approach affect Australia? We should expect ‘failure’ in Iraq to reawaken within the US a more vigorous debate: what is unipolarity good for? What should the US be attempting to do with its power? That debate seems likely to translate into a greater measure of US self-doubt. And that’s something that Australia would be reluctant to see.

     

  7. Afghanistan Receives Australian Police in Drug Fight, ABC, 2007-01-31

    Four senior Australian Federal Police officers will be in Afghanistan from March, mentoring local police in Kabul and helping counter-narcotics operations in the east. Australia’s Justice Minister, Chris Ellison, says it is important that Australia contributes to Afghan and international efforts to control drug production in the country, and “although * it’s primarily narcotics focused, there is also a security aspect to this.”

  8. Cracks in Defence Let Criminals in: Security Report, Cynthia Banham, SMH, 2007-02-07

    Defence’s weak security practices for weapons and munitions in the 1990s created “vulnerabilities” which were open to exploitation by criminal elements, a Defence Security Authority audit into the theft of rocket launchers from the army has found. The audit – ordered by the Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, in December – confirmed that an M72 rocket launcher was stolen from the Australian Defence Force last year.

  9. Exclusive Bird Flu Deal a Setback to Control, Mark Forbes, SMH, 2007-02-08

    The Indonesian Government has reached an exclusive agreement with an American pharmaceutical company to develop a bird flu vaccine. Indonesia is refusing to provide bird flu samples to other countries, companies and the World Health Organisation. Scientists and the WHO have expressed serious concerns about the ban, which they say hampers efforts to avoid a pandemic.

Austral Policy Forum 07-03A: Guns for the Palace Guard in Honiara: We Should Worry – Philip Alpers

Philip Alpers from Sydney University writes of the Solomon Islands that, “If ever there was a signal likely to invite suspicion of budding despotism, surely it’s the leader of a penurious island nation racing to form a ‘Close Personal Protection Unit’ of armed guards for his own use.” “Bringing guns back to the Solomons,” Alpers argues, “would reverse a life-saving regional trend begun in Bougainville, and seen most recently in East Timor, where the first Australian peacekeeping commander declared: ‘We will be disarming everybody in Dili’. Moreover, writes Alpers, “across 20 Pacific nations, and now in East Timor, the most destructive firearms used in crime and conflict were leaked from lawfully imported police, military and civilian holdings. It’s this diversion of lethal weapons from licit to illicit use that is the concern of police and peacekeepers around the world.”

 

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