East Timor

Index

East Timor Main Page
Indonesia's Human Rights Abuses Focus International Attention on East Timor's Bid for Independence
East Timor Declares Independence
East Timor Faces Economic and Political Woes

East Timor Declares Independence

The UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) then governed the territory for nearly three years. On May 20, 2002, nationhood was declared. Charismatic rebel leader José Alexandre Gusmão, who was imprisoned in Indonesia from 1992 to 1999, was overwhelmingly elected the nation's first president on April 14, 2002. The president has a largely symbolic role; real power rests with Parliament and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, also a former guerrilla leader.

The first new country of the millennium, East Timor is also one of the world's poorest. Its meager infrastructure was destroyed by the Indonesian militias in 1999, and the economy, primarily made up of subsistence farming and fishing, is in shambles. East Timor's offshore gas and oil reserves promised the only real hope for lifting the country out of poverty, but a dispute with Australia over the rights to the oil reserves in the East Timor Sea thwarted those efforts. The oil and gas fields lie much closer to East Timor than to Australia, but a 1989 deal between Indonesia and Australia set the maritime boundary along Australia's continental shelf, which gives it control of 85% of the sea and most of the oil. Under these terms, Australia was to receive 82% of the oil revenues and East Timor just 18%. Finally, after years of wrangling, the two countries agreed in May 2005 to defer the redrawing of the border for 50 years and to split the oil and gas revenues down the middle.