Understanding Australia's Role Leading up to the Intervention

Abstract

Some of the key issues about Australia's role in East Timor in 1999 are in danger of becoming obscured by sentiment and myth. The following pages explore three of the more important of these issues, in the light of both personal experience and of some important new accounts of the crisis that have been published in recent years. What did Australia actually do? Did Australia want East Timor to become independent? Was Australia to blame for the violence after the ballot?