Chris Brummitt, Nusakambangan Island – A group of Afghan refugees detained for two weeks after their ship sank off an Indonesian prison island threatened Saturday to go on a hunger strike unless the United Nations agreed to their asylum demands.

Lindsay Murdoch in Liquica and agencies – East Timorese kept what the United Nations had called a date with democracy yesterday, voting in the first democratic election of their turbulent history.

Jakarta – Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has postponed a September 2 visit to rebellious Aceh province, an official said, citing technical reasons. "The proposal is for the fifth and sixth or eighth and ninth," Aceh governor Abdullah Puteh told reporters on Friday. Asked the reason, he replied: "Technical matters ... preparations."

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta – A military reformer, once tipped as a leading candidate to head the powerful Indonesian armed forces (TNI), died yesterday.

Close friends said that Lt-General Agus Wirahadikusumah, the 49-year-old Harvard-trained officer who made bitter enemies with several generals for exposing widespread corruption in the army, died of heart failure.

Christine T. Tjandraningsih, Kupang – As hundreds of thousands of East Timorese went to the polls Thursday in the UN-administered territory's first legislative elections, pro-Jakarta refugees sheltering in West Timor lowered Indonesia's red-and-white national flag to half-mast to mark what many there see as a black day.

Slobodan Lekic, Dili – Women nursed babies held in shoulder slings and people joked with UN monitors as they waited in long lines to vote Thursday in a election seen as a historic step toward nationhood for East Timor.

Rowan Callick – The emergence of democratic government in an independent East Timor is a miracle. The obstacles in its path, through erratic and often cruel Portuguese, Japanese and Indonesian rule, have been horrendous.

At the Toko Lay hardware store in central Dili, Charles Tan was checking a newly arrived generator to sell to the burgeoning construction industry. "We will close the shop for the election but we are not expecting any trouble," he said. "Everything is safe here now and we only want it to continue."

Richard Lloyd Parry – Two years to the day after the 1999 referendum on independence, the East Timorese people vote again on Thursday in the first elections to a democratic national assembly.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Carlos first introduced himself as a driver. When none of Dili's dilapidated taxis could be found, he would always produce one.

Jakarta – Feared ex-militia leader Eurico Guterres declared Thursday a "day of mourning for East Timor" and said its people could end up second-class citizens like Australia's Aborigines.

The United Nations was imposing Thursday's election for a constituent assembly on a people who were not yet ready to stand alone, he told AFP.

Jakarta – Indonesian police on Wednesday released five key negotiators from the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) days ahead of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's visit to the troubled province.

But police said the negotiators still faced trials over allegations of spreading hatred against the government.

Woodside Petroleum, Australia's biggest independent oil and gas group, is to evaluate competing proposals from Royal Dutch/Shell and Phillips Petroleum of the US in an attempt to resolve differences over how the substantial deep sea gas fields between Australia and East Timor should be developed.

Five people arrested Thursday in the East Timorese capital had various weapons in their possession, the UN civil police spokesman said, adding that the operation had nothing to do with the elections occurring on the same day.

Washington – The State Department's top Asia hand is due in Jakarta this weekend in the latest sign of a new US drive to engage Indonesia – but the path to closer US relations with Southeast Asia's dominant power is fraught with controversy.

Jakarta – Indonesia's chief economics minister said on Thursday the haggard economy would be hard pressed to grow more than five percent next year, signalling more hardship ahead for millions of the country's poor.

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta – The economic crunch in Indonesia is spurring a new deadly handicraft in its eastern islands: bomb-making. Police believe that homemade explosives from south-east Sulawesi are being sold to the neighbouring strife-torn areas of Maluku and Poso.

Vaudine England, Dili – East Timor's president-in-waiting, Xanana Gusmao, yesterday restated his belief that amnesties should be considered for people who committed serious crimes. But Dili's bishop, Nobel peace laureate Carlos Belo, disagrees, as do most victims of political violence in East Timor.

Joe Leahy – Building a central bank from scratch in one of the world's poorest countries was never going to be easy.

But Fernando DePeralto, general manager of the Central Payments Office, East Timor's de facto monetary authority, manages to put a gloss on it.

Jakarta – Britain is ready to resume sales of weapons to Indonesia, saying that it has accepted the assurances from the Indonesian Military (TNI) that these arms would not be used for internal repression, including in Aceh.

Dili – Justice must come before amnesty for people guilty of human rights violations in East Timor, a lawyer working to establish a truth commission said Wednesday.

Jon Land – The August 30 election for East Timor's Constituent Assembly signifies an important step towards the conclusion of the United Nations transitional administration. As the UN starts to gradually wind back operations and hand over more direct control to the East Timorese, new and old social tensions are coming to the fore.

Don Greenlees – The Indonesian army has extended an olive branch to East Timor's fledgling defence force, by offering to train former Falintil guerilla fighters and inviting East Timor's military chief, Taur Matan Ruak, to Jakarta for talks.

Joe Cochrane, Ermera – The farmers of Ermera are fiercely proud of their long tradition of growing East Timor's finest coffee, but these days that is not enough to fill their stomaches.

Jakarta – Thousands of activists of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) on Monday staged a rally at the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR)/House of Representatives (DPR), demanding the implementation of Syariah Islam (Islamic Law) as stipulated in the Jakarta Charter.

Dili – East Timor's president in waiting, Xanana Gusmao, said Tuesday that amnesties must be considered for those who led the violence surrounding the territory's independence vote two years ago.

Vamasae – In one of the thousands of charred and gutted buildings that still scar East Timor's landscape, 200 villagers squat before the man who won a Nobel peace prize crusading for their independence, Jose Ramos Horta.

Mark Dodd, Dili – He was East Timor's first president, the head of the short-lived Fretilin administration that unilaterally declared independence in November 1975, 10 days before Indonesia invaded the Portuguese colony.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Nobel Peace Prize-winner Bishop Carlos Belo has made a new appeal to the international community to establish a war crimes tribunal to punish Indonesian military officers and militia leaders who presided over an orgy of killings and destruction in East Timor in 1999.

The upcoming Constituent Assembly elections in East Timor serve "only to comply with the calendar and are neither free nor fair", the leader of the historic UDT party, Joao Carrascalao, said on Tuesday. "The people are neither prepared nor informed enough to vote.

The leader of East Timor's Social Democratic Party (PSD) said Monday in Dili he hoped his party would obtain between 30 and 40 percent of the vote in Thursday's Constituent Assembly elections.

Jakarta – Authorities in a haze-shrouded Indonesian city will make artificial rain to wash away choking smoke from forest and ground fires, the state Antara news agency said Thursday,

Jakarta – An Indonesian court ordered mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia on Tuesday to improve its toxic waste management after it was found guilty of giving false information over a fatal accident at a mining site last year.

Jakarta – Two soldiers were killed and five people were wounded in a shootout between police and troops in Indonesia's easternmost province of Irian Jaya, police said Tuesday.

Jakarta – Following are the key points of Indonesia's agreement with the International Monetary Fund Monday. The agreement, known as a letter of intent, lays out a timetable for economic reforms which Indonesia must complete in return for loans under a $5 billion lending program. The fund has suspended lending since December due to failure to meet reform commitments.

Jakarta – A coalition of watchdogs on legal affairs has lashed out at two court's decisions to dismiss cases against three Supreme Court justices who allegedly accepted bribes, arguing it was an insult to people's sense of law and justice.

Jakarta – Drastic restructuring measures introduced by the new leadership of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) to improve the agency's efficiency has left the agency mired in internal conflict, which analysts say could threaten its ambition to meet 2001 revenue target.

Bronwyn Curran, Baucau – In a good month Carlos Bovida makes 20 dollars selling sweet potatoes and bananas on a lonely road, winding through the sparse mountains of this half-island nation.

Predicting his Fretilin party would win East Timor's first free elections by a landslide, Mari Alkatiri warned the territory's UN transition administration Monday his party could refuse to join a new interim government if UNTAET did not follow Fretilin's lead.

Fretilin Party Secretary-General Mari Alkatiri has guaranteed there would be no radical behaviour on the part of his party as Fretilin were no longer a communist or socialist party.

James Fox – Parliamentary elections will be held in East Timor on Thursday, two years from the day when the East Timorese turned out en masse to vote for their independence. It is expected that 400,000 East Timorese will take part in the coming election.

Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta – East Timor's leaders are planning an international campaign to pressure the Indonesian Government to allow Timorese children separated from their parents at the height of mayhem in East Timor to be reunited with their parents.

Mark Dodd, Dili – The East Timor independence leader Mr Xanana Gusmao has decided not to retire from politics to grow prize pumpkins for the Dili show. He ended months of speculation by announcing at the weekend that he would stand as president of the world's newest country.

Lisbon – East Timor's UN administrator said in a newspaper interview Friday that a broad-based government will be named to govern the territory following next week's elections.

[Speaking for the first time, former Indonesian president B.J. Habibie tells David Jenkins how and why he made the fatal decision to leave control of East Timor in the hands of the military before the bloody referendum which secured the province's freedom.]

Banda Aceh – At least 11 more people have been killed in clashes between Indonesian troops and police and separatist rebels in Aceh province, police and residents said Monday.

Jakarta – Activists have urged the government to reform the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas-HAM), which they said was ineffective as it was dominated by a "conservative group". They claimed that the rights body had failed to carry out the mission laid out by the government, which founded it in 1993.

Dili – It is easy to be optimistic about East Timor's future when you are sitting at the villa of its de facto king – UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello.

David DeVoss – The East Timor branch of Portugal's Banco Nacional Ultramarino in Dili looks like a modern financial institution. It has a smiling receptionist, an unctuous guard and executives seated behind desks papered with documents. But don't bother asking for a Visa card, a letter of credit or interest on any money you might deposit.

Jakarta – Clothes make the man, or the governor, in this case. Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso has proposed increasing his wardrobe allowance this year from 40 million rupiah (S$8,400) to 60 million rupiah.