East Timor's dangerous dowry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Janes Defence Weekly
July 19, 2005 Author:

In August, the details of an accord reached between East Timor and Australia over huge natural gas deposits in the disputed Timor Sea should be formally announced.

However, revenue from gas sources, which is set to earn the country more than USD7.5 billion over 20 years, has created a new set of difficulties.

The government in Dili, aware that East Timor is one of the poorest countries in the world, has produced a plan to ensure gas revenues do not unbalance East Timor's narrow, fragile economic base. According to media reports, this will be achieved by earmarking only 10 per cent of earnings between 2005 and 2011 for use within the country, with the remaining 90 per cent invested in US Treasury bonds. Yet such a policy may dismay the poor within Timor, who feel aggrieved that they have not seen any of the expected wealth since independence. Already, an estimated 80 per cent of the population is without salaried work and the public are showing increasing signs of anger at the slow pace of reconstruction, rehabilitation and the number of jobs available.

The remnants of the militia-led violence that characterised East Timor's break from Indonesia also remain a security problem. In November 2004, President Gusmão warned, as part of his plea for the UN to extend its mandate, that armed militias operating from West Timor posed the main direct threat to his country.

http://www.janes.com/security/internati ... _1_n.shtml