David and Goliath Revisited: A Tale About the Timor Leste/Australia Timor Sea Agreements

• Autor(a) principal: Coutinho, Francisco Pereira
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Gala, Francisco Briosa e
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/29075
• topic: Oil; East-Timor; Australia; Continental Shelf; International Court of Justice; Arbitration.

This Article offers a tale about a dispute over the continental shelf resources of the oil-rich Timor Sea that currently involves a Goliath, Australia, and a David, Timor-Leste. The story includes colonization by a European state, Portugal, an invasion and annexation by a neighbor country, Indonesia, the negotiation of several contentious international treaties, and, more recently, is akin to a John le Carré novel, as it includes espionage, thefts, and imprisonment of whistleblowers. This story is not about the kid-glove diplomacy that usually characterizes relations between states.