Hands Off My Petroleum!

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he passion and certainty of the protagonists aside, the sea-bed boundary issue is devilishly complex. Changes in international law, sovereignty and geopolitics have left a murky situation. That Australia is rich and East Timor is poor counts for nothing. Yet the new nation's recent tragic history - neglected Portuguese colony and brutalized invaded territory - gives the talks a profound moral dimension. John Howard's government spent considerable political capital and diplomatic effort on Timorese independence; it sent 5,700 troops and led the U.N.'s interfet peacekeeping force. "Having helped to liberate East Timor, Australia is obliged to see it succeed," says a western diplomat in Dili. Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown went to Timor during the talks to speak with non-government organizations. "I'm personally appalled by the injustice of Australia wielding the big stick to get East Timor's resources," he says. "Even though we are in the castle and they are in the shanty, we still won't go to arbitration. For Australians, that's shorthand for the government doing the wrong thing." "We all want to see East Timor prosper," says an Australian diplomat involved in the country's march to freedom. "But adjusting maritime boundaries is not the way to deliver redistributive justice." Nor is it a way to make Australia's other negotiations - particularly with Indonesia - any easier.

Few living timorese would know the country's rugged cordillera better than Manuel Mendonça, 38. Known as kokorek (young fowl), he was a teenage member of the clandestine anti-Indonesian resistance movement and then a sub-district commander of the Falintil guerillas, maintaining supply lines and mobilizing support in the mountains outside the capital. The wiry father of six is recuperating at his half-built concrete-block home on Dili's fringe. A decade of camping out in the bush, not to mention torture and imprisonment, has prematurely aged Mendonça, leaving him with tropical diseases, a damaged spine, and bones that have not properly healed after they were broken. Though he now works in the Prime Minister's office as a communications officer, Mendonça can wait half a day for an X ray - then be sent home without even being seen. The country has a heart-breaking child mortality rate; average life expectancy is 57 years. "There is so much this country still needs in basic services," he says. "But I am O.K."

For the past two years, Mendonça has trekked through remote areas in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, explaining to skeptical village chiefs the government's progress in the Timor Sea negotiations and its plans to meet the basic needs of citizens and save half the expected revenues in a fund for future generations - like the thousand young Catholics gathered at a conference in Ermera, a coffee-growing area some 50 km from Dili. It's taken Prime Minister Alkatiri and his escort almost three hours to make the hazardous road journey here, but at the end of his pep talk, he takes 90 minutes of questions. The main issue seems to be the security situation over the coming months, as U.N. forces are wound down. Alkatiri is also asked to explain himself over corruption allegations brought by U.S. company Oceanic Explorations. With a stagnant economy, students want to be told there will be jobs for them when they graduate. "You have to be creative," the P.M. urges. "Design your own jobs." Later, Alkatiri tells Time his country will not follow the example of resource-rich neighbors that have squandered their wealth or been strangled by corruption: "Without a strong institutional footing, high levels of public investment would be dangerous." Idleness will not be tolerated either. "We need to push the people to work for their livelihood, not to depend on social spending."