While I appreciate and respect the work that Jimmy Carter has engaged in as an ex-president, I am not willing to forget that it was during his administration that the Indonesian massacre in East Timor was actively abetted by increasing U.S. arms sales to the Suharto regime.
In late 1977, when Indonesia was actually running out of military equipment, his (Carter's) administration authorized a dramatic increase in arms sales to Jakarta. And over the next several months, the Carter White House approved sales of fighter jets and ground-attack bombers to Indonesia's Suharto regime, whose military employed them in East Timor to bomb and napalm the population into submission. An Australian parliamentary commission would later characterize the period as one of "indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history."
From:
Beyond the Myth -- Remembering Jimmy Carter, the Presidenthttp://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Nevins_Carter.htmPlease read the whole piece for more eye-opening information about Carter administration policies regarding El Salvador, Chile, and the Shah of Iran, among other authoritarian regimes.
If you are not familiar with the history of Indonesia's genocidal war in East Timor, here's some further information:
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/nunestimor.html<snip>
In the last months of 1977, Indonesia intensified its assault. This was made possible by the thoughtful American assistance.
After the invasion in December 1975, armed resistance prevented the Indonesian armed forces from gaining control over the country until 1979. Indonesia's campaign of encirclement and annihilation (1977-1979) achieved its goal due to substantial supplies from the US in 1976 and 1977 of OV10-Broncos, Lockheed C-130 transport planes, 45 Cadillac Cage V-150 commando armoured vehicles equipped with machine-guns, mortar and cannon launchers and a huge quantity of rifles, machine-gun, pistols and communications equipment. This enabled the invaders to devastate areas where the armed resistance and most of the population were holding out. There were huge casualties (an estimated 200,000 deaths in a population of 700,000), cause by heavy bombing and war-related famine and disease. This was followed by the enforced re-settlement of most surviving Timorese in strategic settlements under army control <TAPOL91>.
Father Leoneto Vieira do Rego, a Portuguese priest who spent 3 years in the mountains of East Timor, before surrendering to Indonesia in January 1979, estimated that over 200,000 people had been killed during the first 4 years of the war <_Boston Globe_, January 20, 1980; Chomsky82>. He added that:
The second phase of the bombing was late 1977 to early 1979, with modern aircraft. This was the firebombing phase of the bombing. Even up to this time, people could still live. The genocide and starvation was the result of the full-scale incendiary bombing.
To the _Christian Science Monitor_ (Dec. 17, 1979), he said:
The Indonesians attacked relentlessly with infantry and with U.S.-supplied armed reconnaissance planes known as the OV-10 (Bronco) <Chomsky82>.
As far as I'm concerned, President Carter has a lot of past sins to make up for. So, good for him to be willing to engage with Khatami -- I'm all for anything he does to redeem his past failures and hypocisies.
sw
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