Australia's Interest In

Portuguese Timor

APART from New Guinea, the Islands Territory nearest to the Australian mainland is the Portuguese section of Timor, which contains 7,300 square miles and 450,000 Indonesians.

It has little economic, but great strategical importance. Japan planned to use it as a base for attack on Australia, and Japanese forces occupied it —ignoring the neutrality of Portugal—in January, 1942.

It had been hoped, that as part of the post-war settlement, Australia might purchase this Territory from Portugal.

It is not generally known that, at Canberra on March 27, 1946, the Aus tralian Government announced it had signed, with Portugal, an agreement that Australia would lay no claim to Portu guese Timor. Although Australian troops fought the Japs there, and' the Japs in Timor finally surrendered to the Australians there in September, 1945.

It is understood that recognition of Portuguese sovereignty in Timor was one of the conditions under which Britain was granted by Portugal the use of a base in the Azores, in the very critical days of the Battle of the Atlantic.

The engagement was recently an nounced in Suva of Miss Lee Houn, second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Houn, to Mr. J. B. Chin, of Massachusetts, USA, who recently arrived in the Colony from the United States. The couple first met when Mr. Chin was stationed in Fiji with the American Forces.