Military: East Timor

klong

could irish soldiers have eventually fought the indonesians........?

Anzacs prepared to strike
June 24, 2001
AUSTRALIAN F-111 jets were loaded with bombs ready to attack Jakarta during the landing of United Nations troops in East Timor, a New Zealand defence expert said last night.
And warships were placed on full battle alert, according to David Dickens, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, Wellington.
Dr Dickens said the Australian-led Interfet force sent to East Timor in September 1999 faced "aggressive probing" from Indonesian aircraft and submarines, and was ready to respond.
The tactics "raised questions about the intentions of the Indonesian military", he said.
"Various Interfet ships went to action stations in these incidents."
Senior Australian officers had told him F-111 fighter-bombers were loaded with bombs ready to knock out military communications installations on the outskirts of Jakarta under "worst-case planning".
Australia placed its defence forces on the highest level of readiness for the first 10 days of the operation, he said.
The Interfet force was sanctioned by the UN after Jakarta-backed militiamen went on the rampage in response to a vote by the East Timorese for independence from Indonesia.
It consisted primarily of Australian and New Zealand forces. Australian Interfet officers viewed the Indonesian fighters and submarines as a real threat on a number of fronts, Dr Dickens said.
"The bombing up of the F-111s was part of the overall raising of the whole of the Australian defence force in northern Australia to the highest levels of readiness, so that if there was any attack they would respond," he said.
"I was told by the people that were actually going to do it. It would have been proportional. A big attack would get a big response."
Dr Dickens quoted Rear Admiral Peter McHaffie, the Royal New Zealand Navy chief of staff, as confirming the frigate Canterbury "detected an unidentified submarine contact" as troops sailed to the East Timorese town of Suai.
At one stage, an Indonesian T209 submarine disappeared, sparking an intense search by Interfet aircraft and warships.
Dr Dickens said: "There was a definite concern about naval attack from the submarines and all the other things."
"But the real thing that worried them was that the submarines could have been used to slip in at night near the fleet and offload special forces who might have gone out and sunk one of the ships while it was in Dili harbour or just outside."
The 10-day military stand-off from September 20 ended when senior Australian officers confronted their Indonesian counterparts with intelligence showing them that their submarines had been detected.
A respected defence commentator in the region, Dr Dickens plans to publish an article based on his interviews with Australian and New Zealand officers in the specialist journal Contemporary Southeast Asia.
A spokesman for Australia's Defence Minister, Peter Reith, said: "We are not going to comment specifically on operational matters and on states of readiness at the time.
"The Interfet operation was conducted with the full agreement and co-operation of the Indonesian Government and the Indonesian defence forces."
Relations between Indonesia on the one side and Australia and New Zealand on the other were put under severe strain during the East Timor landings, but have since improved.
President Abdurrahman Wahid is due to become the first Indonesian leader to make a state visit to Australia in 26 years tomorrow