DYNAMICS OF INDONESIAN - TIMOR LESTE RELATIONSHIPS: The Long Road of East Timor Towards an Independent State Through a Referendum in 1999

There are two main questions which has to be answered in this paper: first, how thedynamics between Indonesia-Timor Leste relations since integrational process in 1976year which has chose to separate up to be an independent state by referendum process in1999; And secondly, why does Timor Leste become repettional issue of the internationalpolitics?. This paper uses a neo-realism approach, which emphasizes the role of aninternational structure on determining the behavior of states. According to neo-realist, therole of the state is in fact passive and powerless, because the behavior of the state followsthe existing international structure. This research uses qualitative-descriptive method.Data collection with in-dept interview as main data sources, and also uses written datasources as secondary data such as books, journals, and internet media. The findingssuggest that the cold war had caused the “omission politics” of the big countries on whathappened in Timor Leste. As the cold war ended, major countries withdrew support forindonesia and this led to the issue of Timor Leste being the main discourse in internationalforums and eventually bringing Timor Leste into an independent stat