{"id":44929,"date":"2022-05-28T05:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T20:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/may\/28\/jose-ramos-horta-accuses-alexander-downer-of-distorting-issues-around-2004-timor-leste-bugging"},"modified":"2022-05-28T05:00:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T20:00:14","slug":"jose-ramos-horta-accuses-alexander-downer-of-distorting-issues-around-2004-timor-leste-bugging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=44929","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Ramos-Horta accuses Alexander Downer of \u2018distorting\u2019 issues around 2004 Timor-Leste bugging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: President of south-east Asian nation says Australia used cover of \u2018supposedly altruistic foreign aid program\u2019 to spy on behalf of oil companies<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/series\/australian-news-live\/latest\">Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ng-interactive\/2018\/may\/15\/the-guardian-app?CMP=cvau_sfl\">Download the free Guardian app<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/guardian-australia-morning-mail\/2014\/jun\/24\/-sp-guardian-australias-morning-mail-subscribe-by-email?CMP=cvau_sfl\">get our morning email briefing<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The president of Timor-Leste, Jos\u00e9 Ramos-Horta, has accused former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer of \u201cavoiding and distorting\u201d the issues around the 2004 bugging scandal, saying recent comments ignored the fact that Australia had spied \u201con behalf of oil companies and using the cover of Australia\u2019s supposedly altruistic foreign aid program\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Downer appeared on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/qanda\/2022-26-05\/13891378\">ABC\u2019s Q&amp;A program<\/a> and was questioned about the 2004 Australian Secret Intelligence Service mission to bug Timor-Leste\u2019s government during sensitive talks to carve up oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/may\/28\/jose-ramos-horta-accuses-alexander-downer-of-distorting-issues-around-2004-timor-leste-bugging\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: President of south-east Asian nation says Australia used cover of \u2018supposedly altruistic foreign aid program\u2019 to spy on behalf of oil companiesFollow our Australia news live blog for the latest updatesDownload the free Guardian app; get our &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,324,1945,664,1537],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-australian-politics","category-oil-and-gas-companies","category-timor-leste","category-witness-k-case"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/484"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44930,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44929\/revisions\/44930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}