In the forceful tradition of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jose Ramos-Horta's Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor (Red Sea Press 1987), Geoffrey Gunn, the author of East Timor and the UN, advocates self-determination for East Timor, the small Southeast Asian half-island and former Portuguese colony illegally invaded and occupied by Indonesia in 1975. As in 1992, when the Indonesian Foreign Minister proclaimed East Timor "sharp gravel in our shoes",- a reference to the damage caused to Indonesia's international image by exposure on that issue-an amazingly creative and dedicated international community of activists has arisen over this question.

The book's central theme is the urgent need for UN intervention in East Timor. The UN has presumably been engaged with that problem ever since Portugal attracted that world body's attention on the question of independence to non-self-governing territories in 1960. But Indonesia's obvious failure to observe the relevant UN resolutions condemning the invasion and occupation of East Timor as well as the UN's failure to act upon its own charter are perplexing questions. The Nobel Committee's recent announcement to award the 1996 Peace Prize to Mr. Ramos-Horta and his co-patriot, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo will help draw attention to the ongoing tragedy (see "A Word From the Publisher" on page 1 of this catalog).

This book also features a selection of relevant UN documents and other primary sources relating to East Timor. These include the key General Assembly and Security Council resolutions of 1975-1982, the damning reports of UN special Rapporteurs, the hyper-proceduralist utterances of the Foreign Ministers' meetings, and the World Court"no-case" judgement on the Australian deal with Indonesia over East Timor's oil reserves. This is the most comprehensive collection of official documentation on East Timor published to date, and stands as eloquent testimony of the silent agony of the East Timorese people over two decades.

Geoffrey C. Gunn is Professor of International Relations in the faculty of Economics, Nagasaki University, Japan. A graduate of the Australian university system, he has published a number of works of political history or political sociology on Southeast and West Asia. With Jefferson Lee, he has co-authored works of media analysis on two international questions: Cambodia and East Timor.

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