Spying fears haunted Timorese during oil talks

Tom Allard / June 1, 2007

EAST TIMOR's former prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, and his officials were convinced the Australian Government was spying on them during the often heated negotiations for a treaty over oil and gas in the Timor Sea.

A book on the $41 billion energy deal - Shakedown: Australia's Grab for Timor Oil - also says Australian foreign affairs officials intimated to their Timorese counterparts that they were eavesdropping on them.

Its author, Paul Cleary, a former Herald journalist, was part of the Timorese team led by Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat.

During talks in Canberra in September 2004 Mr Galbraith told colleagues to stop holding meetings in their hotel, fearing their rooms were bugged. The officials threw their mobile phones in a bag, which was dumped while they held their talks in the National Gallery's sculpture garden 100 metres away.

The phones were considered potential receptors for eavesdropping devices but the meeting was adjourned when a security guard became suspicious about the bag.

Other counterespionage efforts included the use of secret passwords for emails.

Mr Alkatiri, East Timor's prime minister through the negotiations, was also convinced his office was bugged. He would turn up the volume on his television during sensitive talks with his advisers.

Cleary also writes that a foreign affairs official, Doug Chester, joked that the Timorese negotiators had made a wrong bet on the Labor leader, Mark Latham, winning the 2004 election.

He suggested the Australians had been monitoring a Timorese official who had visited a website to bet on the poll.

But Foreign Affairs sources said the remark could more likely be explained by East Timor's well-known wish that a more sympathetic Mr Latham would win. (http://www.timor-online.blogspot.com)