TIMOR REFUGEE CENTRE KO’d

LINDSAY MURDOCH – THE AGE – 29 april 2011

Julia Gillard's proposal to build a refugee centre in East Timor has been rejected by the country's President Jose Ramos-Horta, the only senior political figure in the tiny nation who had left the door open to the plan.

''Timor-Leste [East Timor] says that we will not agree to set up an asylum seeker processing centre in the country,'' Dr Ramos-Horta told Timorese journalists.

The declaration will embarrass the Prime Minister, who has been insisting talks with East Timor's leaders were continuing at the highest levels despite earlier rejection of the plan by the country's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, Deputy Prime Minister Jose Luis Guterres and senior ministers.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen was still insisting East Timor's Council of Ministers - the equivalent of Australia's cabinet - has not rejected the plan.

However, the council decided last year that East Timor would not negotiate the plan directly with Australia, referring the issue instead to a 50-nation meeting on people smuggling known as the Bali Process.

Official sources in Dili told The Age that members of East Timor's delegation felt they were poorly treated by Australia's representatives during a ministerial-level meeting of the Bali Process last month, where Ms Gillard's plan did not rate a mention during official talks.

Their complaint was discussed during a recent meeting of the Council of Ministers in Dili, sources said.

Mr Bowen's spokesman referred The Age to comments Mr Bowen made on radio on Wednesday, including that Dr Ramos-Horta still regarded the centre as a possibility and that ''discussions continue''.

But Dr Ramos-Horta delivered the final blow to the plan in comments reported by East Timor's Independente newspaper, saying a regional centre was not an issue to be discussed between East Timor and Australia.

''There should be a regional agreement and the agreement should not be made by Timor-Leste and Australia because it is not a bilateral problem,'' Dr Ramos-Horta said.

Observers in Dili say the plan was never going to be approved by East Timor, a country of a million mostly impoverished people struggling with a myriad of social, security and development problems.

But East Timor's leaders

wanted to be seen to be considering Ms Gillard's proposal as Australian diplomats and officials attempted to push what was widely seen as an ill-conceived idea.

In addition to government leaders, the plan was also opposed by the Fretilin opposition, four parties in the ruling coalition and dozens of non-government and community organisations.

Canberra journalist Laurie Oakes revealed last year that hours before Kevin Rudd was deposed as PM he told Ms Gillard that a refugee centre in East Timor would not work and East Timor would not accept it. But Ms Gillard went ahead despite the advice and announced her plan for the centre only days before the last federal election.

Last year, some senior officials in Dili toyed with the idea of allowing Australia to build the centre on East Timor's undeveloped south coast if Canberra in return were to fund major infrastructure projects in the area.

But Mr Gusmao publicly dismissed the plan during an interview with The Economist magazine in London in March, saying he would not be able to explain to his poor countrymen why foreign asylum seekers would be entitled to international-grade healthcare, food, clothing and schooling for their children while many Timorese did not.

Mr Ramos-Horta revealed two weeks ago in an interview he had not discussed Ms Gillard's plan with any Australian officials for months, while still insisting the door was still open to negotiations. But he raised concerns about the length of time it would take to process asylum seekers, and said that setting up a regional centre outside a regional agreement framework ''would be like a Band-Aid approach''.

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 TheAge