On December 22, 1975, at Portugal's urging, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that condemned Jakarta's invasion and occupation, and supported East Timor's right to self-determination. (A similar resolution passed in April 1976, with the US and Japan abstaining.) 

José Ramos-Horta, FRETILIN's UN representative at the time, explained the vote this way: "Permanent members of the Security Council [couldn't] have abstained on such a blatant case of armed aggression involving a NATO ally [Portugal]," especially since "the Security Council is a more visible body than the General Assembly." In other words, the West's affirmative vote was more an attempt to save face than a condemnation of the invasion, and the earlier vote in the General Assembly more closely represented their position. 

International legal specialist Roger Clark has argued that if further and stronger Security Council resolutions had been proposed, the US would have blocked their approval. A statement by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US ambassador to the UN during the Ford administration, bears out Clark's analysis. Concerning UN inaction on East Timor, Moynihan boasted that "The [US] Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." 

A close look at individual countries' behind-the-scenes dealings with Indonesia shows that their behavior at the UN was part of a much larger pattern of support for Indonesia. Not only did a number of powerful Western or Western-aligned countries fail to condemn the invasion; they also either knew the invasion was imminent and did nothing to prevent it, or were actually complicit in Indonesia's brutality. The most significant accomplice was the US. 

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