The Comissão Nacional de Descolonização/National Decolonisation Commission (CND), constituted under the dependence of the presidency of the Portuguese Republic in September 1974, had the purpose of defining the lines of action and directives of the decolonisation process. Its activity has not been studied as a whole, with occasional references being made toit, partly due to the dispersion of the documentation it produced and the informal nature with which, sometimes, its members acted, plus fluctuations in its composition depending on changes in government and other “revolutionary” bodies or on whom the president of the republic wished to convene.

During the period in which it functioned, until the summer of 1976, this body closely followed the development of the independences of the African territories and was confronted with the decolonisation of Timor-Leste, the object of this text. In order to understand the role of this commission in the fate of Timor-Leste, we will refer to the context of its creation and then show how it was slow to define a clear political line regarding the territory, responding hesitantly to pressures from Timor and Indonesia. After the August 1975 crisis in Timor and the departure of the Portuguese authorities from Dili to Atauro, the CND gradually took on a more interventionist role in conducting political, diplomatic and military decisions. After the Indonesian invasion, the Timor problem would almost exclusively be the one leading CND to meet several times in 1976.