East Timor slams ‘selfish rivalries’, calls for US-China partnership for peace at Shangri-La Dialogue
- President José Ramos-Horta told a Singapore defence summit that rich nations must do more to ease inequality and stop squandering aid money
- In the USSR’s absence, China has become ‘a magnet for disillusion with the West’, he said, as he pitched anew for his country’s full Asean membership
“Hard power tools available to the mightily rich of the world are not lawfully applied because the powers that could make a difference between war and peace are too busy squandering resources in narrow, selfish rivalries, each bent on regional influence and supremacy,” he said.
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“We share the same planet but we live in different global villages. Most survive in slums; a few live in Alice in Wonderland palatial homes; but we are all vulnerable as the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have shown,” he said.
Ramos-Horta said wealthy nations should offer aid without “legal and bureaucratic entanglements” and with “less demands and intrusions” and in turn, those in the Global South should bear responsibility for their condition and invest in their people.
Those offering aid should direct it towards real problems, not spend money on “endless studies, missions, international experts”, he said.
Political pragmatism has always driven China’s economic growth
“If the rich north wishes to regain the trust of the Global South, there has to be a wiser and more honest and determined strategy to support the hundreds of millions who, for decades, have humbly queued up for Western aid,” Ramos-Horta said.
He recalled a conversation he’d had with “an impoverished” Somali diplomat at the UN’s Palace of Nations in the early 1990s about being left “alone” after the collapse of the USSR, which many nations had turned to “when the Europeans and Americans lectured us on human rights and refused to help”.
“It was feared in some quarters that the collapse of the Soviet Union would have an unpredictable contagious impact on China. Well, China survived it all. Fast forward to 2023, China is a true global power, a magnet for disillusion with the West,” he said. “I haven’t seen my Somali friend in a long time. But nowadays, he probably would say, I quote: ‘We are no longer alone. Now, we go to China’.”
China is a true global power, a magnet for disillusion with the West
“In the midst of global turmoil, I’m pleased to say my country, East Timor, is a twinkling light of peace and fraternity,” the leader said, adding that peace, tranquillity, tolerance and inclusion were prevalent in the once war-torn nation.
Ramos-Horta expressed gratitude to Asean for supporting East Timor during its crisis in the 1990s, when pro-Indonesian militia groups attacked civilians. He added that membership in Asean was a “pillar” of the country’s agenda.
Many issues, including concerns that the economically weak and impoverished East Timor would be a burden to Asean, had plagued its membership application.
East Timor in Asean may make bloc ‘more vulnerable to big powers’
Acknowledging those concerns, Ramos-Horta said his country now had 16 universities compared to one in 2002, and 1,200 medical workers where there were previously 19.
“Our best contribution to Asean is that we should not be a burden,” he said. “We develop as much as we can. And I have to say ironically, we might be poor but we are an investor in international finance. We have a sovereign fund which we created in 2004.
