Timor "spy flights’ denied

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 8

Timor "spy flights’ denied

NZPA—AAP Canberra An angry Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Bill Hayden, denied allegations yesterday that Australian Defence Force aircraft might have been engaged in “spy flights” over East Timor. He said that the Indonesian Armed Forces chief, General Benny Murdani, had raised with him in Jakarta earlier this month the question of alleged unauthorised flights by small planes over East Timor in

the last six months. Mr Hayden had said the flights might have been drug-smug-glers. Describing as "outrageously irresponsible” a television report, screened on the A.B.C. programme “Nationwide” on Tuesday night and picked up by A.B.C. News and other media outlets yesterday, Mr Hayden expressed concern at the damage that might be caused to Australia’s already fragile relationship ■ with its northern neigh-

bour. He said that it had crossed his mind the plane or planes might have been flown by people sympathetic to the Fretilin forces fighting the Indonesians in East Timor, but there was no evidence of the planes’ making drops or communicating with people on the island. . While General Murdani had not said the Indonesians would shoot down the aircraft; Mr Hayden warned those concerned that they

were "engaging in a quite unwise and hazardous undertaking.” The Defence Minister, Mr Gordon Scholes, denied the allegations but admitted that Royal Australian Air Force transport planes flew over East Timor once every two weeks on their return from Butterworth, Malaysia. Those flights, believed to be made by Boeing 707 aircraft, had diplomatic clearance from Indonesia.