Joanne Collins, Jakarta – Indonesia will unveil on Friday a draft budget constrained by a mountain of debt that has left President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government with barren coffers and few options to prove it can fix the shattered economy.

The leader of East Timor's ASDT party, Fransico Xavier do Amaral, told Lusa Wednesday in Dili that he would not be a future candidate for president.

Xavier do Amaral, whose party's strong performance in last week's Constituent Assembly elections surprised many observers, said his decision was due to a lack of adequate funds and support.

The Deputy President of the Dili District Court Rui Pereira dos Santoas stressed that the Timor Lorosae Judiciary will continue using Bahasa Indonesia and Tetun in all proceedings for about 10 to 15 years despite Portuguese being made the official language of the Constituent Assembly.

Jakarta – Minister of Manpower Jacob Nuwa Wea here on Monday criticized an International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention which permits as few as 10 employees to establish their own workers' union.

Xanana's interview with Tempo magazine:

Tempo: At first you dithered on being nominated as president. But you changed your mind later. Why?

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – Millions of poor Indonesians are among the hardest-hit by corruption, as various unofficial levies charged by low-level officials are eating into their meagre earnings.

Jakarta – The gap between transparency and accountability within Indonesia's public sector is a major challenge to its economic reform program, according to Mark Baird, World Bank country director for Indonesia.

Banda Aceh – Ships using the Malacca Strait – one of the world's busiest sea lanes – should "seek permission" from separatist guerrillas in Indonesia's Aceh province, a rebel leader said Monday.

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – They are valuable for criminals on the run; handy for men who want to take a second wife, and indispensable for people with little tolerance and time for the Indonesian bureaucracy.

The items in great demand are identification cards or KTP – a must have for Indonesians over 18 – issued by the government but bearing fake information.

East Timor's Defense Force would be willing to accept Indonesian military aid if the offer was made by Jakarta, the force's commander said on Monday. "If they decide to help us, then we are willing to accept the offer because we want to improve relations with Indonesia", Brigadier General Taur Matan Ruak said.

Jose Ramos Horta said Monday in Dili he was "profoundly sad" about the "unhappy", "lamentable" and "incendiary" criticism of the East Timorese election process leveled by the leader of the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT), Joao Carrascalao.

Dili – The winners of last week's historic election in East Timor must listen to the people when drafting a constitution as a prelude to independence, two watchdog groups said Monday.

Lincoln Wright – Two star witnesses behind the allegation that Defence knew beforehand of the murder of five Australian journalists at Balibo in 1975 now maintain they never saw an intelligence intercept warning that Indonesian forces were planning the killings.

Jakarta – An East Timorese claimed on Saturday that members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) have made secret contacts with proindependence East Timorese, asking how the latter won their freedom from Indonesia, Antara reported.

Banda Aceh, – A provincial legislator and five other civilians have been killed in the restive Indonesian province of Aceh, police and residents said Sunday.

Presenter: Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of UNTAET, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, has replied to the fraud accusations, made by UDT (Timorese Democratic Union) leader Joao Carrascalao, after the (30 August) elections (for the constituent assembly).

Annastashya Emmanuelle, Jakarta – Complicated bureaucratic procedures await street vendors who wish to claim their belongings after being confiscated by the city public order officials during crackdowns across the city.

The procedures are time consuming and cost them relatively a lot of money before they manage to get back their belongings.

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.

Jakarta – Desperate officials are scrambling to find funds, including taking commercial loans if necessary, to pay striking teachers demanding their six months' overdue salary.

Jakarta – The World Bank has warned the Indonesian government to seriously tackle corruption, saying that progress in stamping out loan abuse was the key to the bank's future lending strategy for the country. Indonesia should focus less on the level of lending it received, more on how well the money was being used, World Bank country director Mark Baird said on Thursday.

Jakarta – Indonesia must properly punish the killers of three UN workers before the United States can resume full military ties, a senior US official said yesterday.

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.

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."

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 – 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.