The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (61 page)

Otherwise, however, the Security Council has been marginal to addressing the India-Pakistan conflict. Paralysed during the 1971 India-Pakistan War, the Security Council found that its resolution soon after the end of the conflict had limited impact. The possibility of a veto by either of the two superpowers on behalf of India or Pakistan limited its potential role, and the Council played no part in the Simla Agreement, which formally ended the 1971 war. The Council was also marginalized in the 1999 Kargil conflict, and in the three India-Pakistan crises, indicating its limitations in conflicts where it is in the interests of neither state to seek UN assistance and situations short of conflict. In the former case, Pakistan denied any official involvement in the territorial gains being made across the LoC by ‘irregulars’, whereas India wanted to avoid internationalizing the Kargil conflict as it was in a stronger military position.

It can also be concluded that the Security Council has had no impact on three key issues. First, notwithstanding considerable Council effort in the 1940s and 1950s on the UN-mandated phased withdrawal of troops from both the Indian and Pakistani side of the ceasefire line in princely J&K, there has been neither withdrawal of Pakistani troops nor a reduction of Indian troops from this area. While Pakistan refused to withdraw its forces from J&K until the mutual staged demilitarization of J&K was agreed upon and the people of Kashmir were able to exercise their right of self-determination, India refused to reduce its troops before Pakistan did so. These developments may well be overtaken by Pakistan President Musharraf’s proposals in 2005–6 for the demilitarization of J&K, as part of a possible package deal with India on Kashmir.

Secondly, there has still been no UN-supervised plebiscite to determine the accession of J&K to either India or Pakistan. This was a proposal that both countries initially supported, but from which India gradually began to distance itself by the mid-1950s due to the evolving global security environment and local politics in J&K which made the majority vote in favour of India appear uncertain. It is now unlikely that this will ever take place. The entire state of J&K, to which the Council resolutions apply, no longer exists; the status quo on both sides of the CFL/LoC has changed considerably since the 1940s. On the Pakistani side, the Shaksgam Valley (Ladakh) was ceded to China in 1963, and large-scale demographic changes have taken place with the influx of a Punjabi and Hazra-Pathan population. On the Indian side, a constituent assembly election took place in September 1951, the Delhi Agreement of 1952 defined the relationship between the J&K and the central government, and the Indian-controlled J&K Constitution in 1957 declared that the state of J&K was an integral part of India, and that accession to India was final and irrevocable. In March 1965, the ceremonial head of the state (Sardar-i-Riyasat) began to be called Governor and the state’s prime minister, the Chief Minister. Furthermore, several parliamentary and assembly elections have subsequently taken place in J&K. In addition, China occupies the large Aksai Chin area in Ladakh, which was part of the entire J&K state.

Notwithstanding the growing practical difficulties in holding a plebiscite, Pakistan felt the need to refer to Council Resolutions in an attempt to internationalize the issue at a time when India was refusing to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan. On 17 December 2003, President Musharraf boldly offered to drop the traditional demand for a UN plebiscite in Kashmir, and meet India ‘half way’ in a bid to resolve the Kashmir dispute. This has been a major psychological and political irritant to India.
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In response, India finally appeared to agree that Kashmir was disputed territory – which it had refused to do previously – and formally recognized Islamabad’s role in the future of divided Kashmir. The India-Pakistan Joint Statement of 6 January 2004 clearly stated that the Kashmir problem was to be settled ‘to the satisfaction of both sides’. In return, Pakistan pledged to prevent cross-border infiltration and terrorism by undertaking that it would ‘not permit any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support terrorism in any manner’
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In May 2007, the report entitled ‘Kashmir: Present situation and future prospects’ written by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, received overwhelming support from the European Parliament, of which she is a member. This report suggested that the preconditions for holding the long-promised plebiscite on the final status in Kashmir do not yet exist.
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Thirdly, the Council’s condemnation of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapon tests may have been dealt a major blow with the prospective landmark India-US civil nuclear deal concluded in 2006. This agreement will push for full bilateral civil nuclear cooperation despite India’s refusal to sign the NPT or agree to the provisions of UNSC Resolution 1172. It aims to provide previously denied civil nuclear technology and supplies to India in return for the separation of civil and military nuclear facilities and acceptance of international safeguards on civil facilities.
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Although India advocates a strong pro-UN stance on global and international security issues, on security matters close to home it is far more circumspect. This is a direct result of what it perceived to be a bitter experience dealing with the Security Council over the Kashmir issue. Partly in view of its non-aligned foreign and security policy and its perceived distance from military alliances, India preferred to task itself with maintaining the security of Kashmir rather than rely on multilateral institutions for this purpose. It has also favoured a bilateral approach in dealing with its neighbours, as illustrated by its relationship with Pakistan, for example, after the Simla Agreement of 1972. Such an approach takes advantage of India’s own relative strengths and capabilities in relation to its neighbours and prevents them from ‘ganging up’ against it, especially as it is the only country which shares borders with virtually all its South Asian neighbours.

In the Indian experience, the differences among the P5 due to the Cold War provided a useful opportunity actively to seek the prospect of a veto by the Soviet Union on an unfavourable draft Security Council resolution. The Soviet Union also successfully brokered the end of the Second Kashmir War with a peace agreement at Tashkent in January 1966. As a rising great power, with a booming economy providing greater political influence, India needs to gain confidence in dealing with the UN in its own neighbourhood while at the same time seeking its reform and a seat for itself in an expanded Security Council.

PETER CAREY
WITH THE ASSISTANCE
OF PAT WALSH
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T
HE
former Portuguese colony of East Timor, now the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste (Republica Democrática Timor Leste/RDTL), should have become an independent state on 15 October 1978. This was the date fixed by the Portuguese Council of the Revolution for the final transfer of power from Lisbon to a proposed Timorese National Assembly elected by popular mandate,
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an arrangement which, it was widely acknowledged even by the Indonesians, had the overwhelming support of the majority of Timorese.
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Enacted on 17 July 1975, Constitutional Law 7/75 was immediately overtaken by the events, most notably the three-week civil war between the two main independence parties (Fretilin and UDT) (11 August to early September 1975)
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and the subsequent Indonesian invasion (7 December 1975). It was to be 24 years before the Timorese were again given the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination. During that quarter century, perhaps as many as 183,000 out of a pre-1975 population of 700,000 perished from war-related causes.
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More were to die between the 4 September 1999 announcement
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of the 78.5 per cent popular endorsement of independence following the UN-supervised referendum on 30 August 1999 and the arrival of the Security Council-mandated and Australian-led International Force East Timor (InterFET) on 20 September. In those two and a half weeks, the departing Indonesians destroyed 75 per cent of the territory’s infrastructure and displaced two-thirds of its population. If post-Khmer Rouge Kampuchea (1975–9) had to rebuild from Year Zero, East Timor had to begin from an even lower point as it made its long-denied transition to full statehood under the aegis of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET, 1999–2002).

The Council was involved in the East Timor issue from the very moment the Indonesians invaded in December 1975, passing two resolutions calling for the immediate withdrawal of all Indonesian forces.
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Yet it took nearly a quarter of a century before the UN’s highest body backed its words with actions. Why? The short answer is the Cold War and the very different international contexts in which the East Timor issue was considered at the UN as the world moved from the bipolarity of the mid-1970s to the ‘new world order’ of the 1990s. This chapter will examine the role of the UN – in particular the Security Council – during the two periods 1975–89 and 1990–99 and assess what can be learnt from its handling of the Timor question. Was it indeed the ‘success story’ which the Council has claimed, or rather a brave – last minute – attempt to ‘square the circle’ between the imperative of East Timor’s right to self-determination, the concern for Indonesia’s stability, and the strategic interests of the Western powers?

On 29 November 1974, just over six months after the fall of the Caetano regime in Portugal, General Assembly Resolution 3246 (XXIX) called on

This resolution harked back to Article 73 of the UN Charter which dealt directly with the issue of non-self-governing territories, enjoining those members with responsibilities for such territories to take due account of their political aspirations and to assist them in the development of their free political institutions.

In 1961, the UN had sought to give momentum to the decolonization agenda by creating a Special Committee on Decolonization, later known as the ‘Committee of 24’.
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This had a particular brief to advise the General Assembly on ways to promote decolonization and independence. To this end, it was authorized to travel widely, to hold hearings, prepare background papers, and to send missions to gather first-hand information about the situation of colonized territories and the wishes of their inhabitants. On the basis of that evidence, it would make recommendations to the General Assembly.

Portugal denied the Special Committee access to East Timor and prevented the East Timorese from making any depositions to it. Indeed, during the entire 48 years of the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship (1926–74), there was no cooperation of any sort between Portugal and the UN or its League of Nations predecessor. That was the reality for Timor in the mid-1970s. Most Timorese knew little about the new UN decolonization initiatives and the implications they might have for their political future. When members of the tiny Timorese elite did get an inkling, such as the future Nobel Peace Prize winner, José Ramos-Horta, he was forced into African exile.
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Between 1960 and 1974, the Special Committee was passive on the Timor question. Even after the overthrow of the dictatorship by the Armed Forces Movement in April 1974, it met just once – in Lisbon in June 1975 – to consider East Timor’s future, concluding that ‘with regard to Timor and its dependencies, the Special Committee expresses the hope that the necessary steps will be taken… to enable the people of that Territory to attain the goals set forth in the UN Charter.’
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This bland statement stands in stark contrast to its input into a series of General Assembly resolutions upholding the rights of peoples in other Portuguese colonial territories in Africa. The only positive step which the Special Committee took in the late 1970s and 1980s was to allow international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to petition it on the situation of East Timor under Indonesian occupation despite Jakarta’s objections.
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The lack of initiative taken by the Special Committee and the UN as a whole caused the last Governor of East Timor, Colonel Mário Lemos Pires (in office, 1974–5), to complain that ‘all countries in the world asked Portugal to decolonise but when the time came [in the mid-1970s], none attempted to help or support us.’
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There is no doubt that the Permanent Five (P5) and other UN member states with interests in South East Asia, all of whom had a responsibility for at least providing moral support for the process of self-determination and decolonization in East Timor, failed in their duties. Indeed, most were directly complicit in Indonesia’s act of aggression and its twenty-four-year military occupation. As the British ambassador in Jakarta, John Archibald Ford, put it five months before the Indonesian invasion, ‘it is in Britain’s interests that Indonesia should absorb the territory as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, and that if it comes to the crunch and there is a row at the UN we should keep our heads down and avoid siding with the Indonesians,’
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sentiments echoed by his US colleague in the Indonesian capital, David Newsom, who remarked laconically that if Jakarta invaded, it should do so ‘effectively, quickly and not use our equipment’.
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