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.

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

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 turbule

Christine T.

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.

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 ass

At the Toko Lay hardware store in central Dili, Charles Tan was checking a newly arrived generator to sell to the burgeoning construction industry.

Rowan Callick – The emergence of democratic government in an independent East Timor is a miracle.

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

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 Aborigine

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 resolv

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

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

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.

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'

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.

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 th

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

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 ele

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,

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 Indon

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

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 nat

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

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.

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 t

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.

[Speaking for the first time, former Indonesian president B.J.

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.

David DeVoss – The East Timor branch of Portugal's Banco Nacional Ultramarino in Dili looks like a modern financial institution.

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.

Mark Dodd, Dili – East Timor's Cabinet member for foreign affairs, Mr Jose Ramos Horta, has blasted the United Nations mission in Dili for obstructing the implementation of Portuguese a

Lindsay Murdoch, Dare Mulo – Some people wept. Others sang national songs they had rehearsed for days and stamped their bare feet in the dust.

Dili – A US-based election monitoring group said Friday it was satisfied with conditions for East Timor's first free elections next week, but expressed concern over cases of voter intim

Some East Timorese political forces have set up security-style partisan groups in preparation for next week4s elections but have not generated any problems, UN administration officials

Jane Counsel – Delicate negotiations over a new Timor Gap revenue sharing agreement were further unhinged yesterday, after a small American group launched legal action against the Feder

Bronwyn Curran, Dili – East Timorese voters are relishing their first-ever taste of democracy but some parties in next week's elections have tried to intimidate them, local poll watchdo

Mark Dodd, Dili – An East Timorese anti-independence leader said yesterday he would tell refugees in camps in West Timor that the world's newest country was on the road to democracy.

Mark Dodd, Dili – The UN Serious Crimes Unit, charged with investigating human rights violations in East Timor in 1999, says it is investigating 674 documented murders but has insuffici

Canberra – Australia is unable to dictate a solution to a dispute between East Timor and a US-based oil company that has stalled construction of a key gas pipeline, the government said

An American Civpol officer stationed in Bobonaro District was stoned by a group of Timorese at the border area.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – The political party of East Timor's independence heroes, Fretilin, has been accused of using intimidation, threats and "Indonesian-style" campaigning ahead of

The number two in East Timor's Fretilin party hierarchy, Mari Alkatiri, strongly critized Wednesday the territory's Independent Eletoral Mediation Panel, which has complained about the

Mark Dodd, Dili – Those responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in East Timor in 1999 are likely to escape prosecution by a special Indonesian war crimes tribunal, accord

The Senate has rejected a proposal for an international war crimes tribunal covering the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

Canberra – Australia said on Tuesday it would urge Phillips Petroleum Co chairman and chief executive Jim Mulva to talk tough with East Timor over tax proposals which are stalling a Tim

East Timorese women's rights groups have gathered more than 10,000 signatures backing the inclusion of a "Women's Rights Charter" in the territory's future constitutiuon, activists anno