DILI (TOP) – The Australian diplomat in Timor-Leste has explained the trilateral security pact between the three giant countries, that proclaimed on 15 September 2021 for the Indo-Pacific region to the former prime minister of Timor-Leste, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão.
Eminent Person of the g7+, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão received a brief visit from the Australian ambassador to Timor-Leste Bill Costello who was accompanied by defense attache Paul Pembroke and adviser Bonnie Hoffman at the g7+ headquarters in Dili, Tuesday 21 March 2023.
Xanana that accompanied by the former Timor-Leste ambassador to Singapore Roberto Soares and the g7+ secretariat team Felix Piedade welcomed this brief visit with joy and pleasure.
At this short meeting, Ambassador Bill Costello shared information about the Australian government's commitment to continuing to strengthen and foster cooperation and bilateral relations between Australia and Timor-Leste.
Ambassador Castello also informed about the trilateral security pact between Australia the United States and the United Kingdom in 2021.
After the meeting Xanana was grateful and grateful for the support from the Australian government, and will look forward to further strengthening the cooperation that will bring benefits to the people of Timor-Leste and Australia.
After meeting with Costello, Xanana also received a visit from the head of the European Union delegation to Timor-Leste Marc Fiedrich.
During the visit, Marc conveyed the European Union's willingness to provide technical support for the Timor-Leste parliamentary elections which will take place on 21 May 2023.
AUKUS is a new three-way strategic defence alliance between Australia, the UK and US, initially to build a class of nuclear-propelled submarines, but also to work together in the Indo-Pacific region, where the rise of China is seen as an increasing threat, and develop wider technologies.
It means Australia will end the contract given to France in 2016 to build 12 diesel electric-powered submarines to replace its existing Collins submarine fleet. The deal marks the first time the US has shared nuclear propulsion technology with an ally apart from the UK.
AUKUS, also styled as Aukus, is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, announced on 15 September 2021 for the Indo-Pacific region. Under the pact, the US and the UK will assist Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
The perceived scale of the Chinese threat in the Indo-Pacific region – a vast zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south to Australia – has grown dramatically in recent years. Nuclear-propelled submarines in this context have longer range, are quicker and are harder to detect.
But the UK national security adviser, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, has made it clear Aukus is about more than a class of submarine, describing the pact as “perhaps the most significant capability collaboration in the world anywhere in the past six decades”.
He added it was a project “in gestation for some months”. The US president, Joe Biden, spoke of the need to maintain a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and to address the region’s “current strategic environment”.
Relations between the three allies and China were already at a low and the deal, which did not name China but was widely understood to be in response to its expansionism in the South China Sea and aggression towards Taiwan, drew a swift response from Beijing.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said the three countries were in the grip of an “obsolete cold war zero sum mentality and narrow-minded geopolitical concepts” and should “respect regional people’s aspiration […] otherwise they will only end up hurting their own interests”.
China also questioned Australia’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, while the state-run Global Times, which often takes a harder line than Chinese officials, said: “Australian troops are also most likely to be the first batch of western soldiers to waste their lives in the South China Sea.”
