A group of Australians who fought in East Timor in World War II has launched an advertising campaign condemning Canberra for its treatment of Dili in negotiations over lucrative oil and gas resources under the Timor Sea.
The veterans credit locals with saving their lives during their battle against the Japanese in 1941 and 1942.
But they claim Australia's insistence that it control the lion's share of the undersea resources was unfair.
"I fought for Australia. I risked my life so that we could live in a fair and just world," says one in the advertisements which are being broadcast in the lead-up to Anzac Day -- Australia's veterans' day -- on April 25.
not welcome
They said Prime Minister John Howard would not be welcome at their Anzac Day marches because of his dispute with the new nation over the splitting of oil and gas reserves estimated to be worth more than US$30 billion.
The campaign is being bank-rolled by a Melbourne businessman, Ian Melrose, but it has not gained the support of the country's main veterans' organization, the Returned and Services League.
Howard yesterday brushed off the protest.
"I am aware of the debt owed by many Australians from World War II to the people of Timor ... but I'm also aware that we played a major role in the freeing of the country," Howard said.
Australia headed a peacekeeping force that quelled savage violence by pro-Jakarta militias after East Timorese voted in August 1999 for independence from Indonesia.
`DECENT'
Howard described his government's stance in the dispute centering on where to draw the maritime border between the two nations as fair, considerate and decent.
East Timor wants the boundary to lie midway between the two countries, giving it most of the resources.
Australia maintains that the boundary should be at the edge of its continental shelf, giving it the lion's share.
One supporter of the protest ad campaign, Veteran Paddy Kenneally, 89, said that he and all the other members of his unit believed they would not have lasted 10 weeks in the mountains of East Timor were it not for the assistance they received from East Timorese and Portuguese people.
"They fed us, they sheltered us, they guided us, they carried the wounded," he told ABC radio.
`fair go'
"We are always boasting about a fair go and now we are depriving the poorest country and one of the newest countries in the world of the only resource they have," he said.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that the advertisements would not influence negotiations.
He described them as "both dishonest and irresponsible."
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