Jon Lamb – The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) in East Timor has completed its report documenting human rights violations that took place under 24-year-long Indonesian military (TNI) occupation.

East Timor says it's only weeks away from finalising a boundary deal with Australia to exploit the oil and gas reserves of the Greater Sunrise field in the Timor Sea. Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta says the draft agreement is 90 percent finalised, and would be worth five billion dollars to East Timor over 20 years.

Presenter/Interviewer: Graeme Dobell

Dili – East Timor's government is ready to adopt "drastic measures" to reconstruct Dili, ending anarchy and reducing population pressures, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri said Wednesday.

Alkatiri cautioned, however, that there was no plan to resort to force to expel migrant and refugee residents of the capital, a city of some 160,000.

Baucau – Unknown assailants attacked a police station in East Timor's second city before dawn Monday, injuring one officer, the country's police commander said.

John M. Miller – Although many view Indonesia's new President, retired General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY, as a reformer, he has yet to take steps toward greater accountability for human rights violations by Indonesia's security forces.

Charles Scheiner – East Timor hopes to use its offshore oil and gas deposits to enable the country to escape its position as the poorest nation in Asia. Managing those resources, however, will be a challenge for the inexperienced nation.

East Timor must avoid the "paradox of plenty" which has brought misery to people in oil-producing countries across the Third World.

Sian Powell in Tubu, West Timor – Yosep Palbeno gestures furiously as he tells the story of how he was threatened by five armed East Timorese police officers. Barefoot and grizzled, the market farmer has a garden high in the remote hills of West Timor, on the edge of the international border between Indonesia and the East Timorese enclave of Oecussi.

Sian Powell and Mark Dodd – From his post high in the misty Indonesian hills of Manusasi, Indonesian First Lieutenant Sujatmin keeps watch on the international border with East Timor.

It's an increasingly important – and potentially dangerous – job. In the past six weeks, there have been nine violent incursions over the border, spurring a flurry of international diplomacy.

Mark Dodd – A notorious Indonesian army battalion implicated in mass killings, torture and mutilation – including the 1999 murder of a Dutch journalist – is in charge of security along the border with East Timor.

The UN Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor charged Indonesian battalion 745 with the 1999 murders of 21 civilians, including journalist Sander Thoenes.

Jakarta – The governments of Indonesia and Timor Leste have agreed that neither country should use the land around disputed borders at present to avoid possible clashes among people living in the areas, an official said on Friday.

Mark Forbes Jakarta and Cynthia Banham – Indonesia and East Timor have played down border clashes involving mobs backed by Jakarta's troops, saying they could resolve the building tensions.

East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, said he retained faith in the Indonesian leadership, but yesterday rushed to the Oecussi region, where the violence happened.

Passabe, East Timor – Foreign Minister Josi Ramos Horta said Thursday that recent incidents on the border between East Timor and Indonesian West Timor in Dili's Oecussi enclave, were carried out by former anti-independence militiamen.

Mark Dodd – A mob backed by Indonesian troops has crossed into East Timor, attacked a border patrol and set fire to buildings, threatening the fragile peace between the two nations.

Cynthia Banham – An East Timorese human rights group that criticised the Federal Government over its negotiations with the fledgling nation on maritime boundaries has been stripped of it funding.

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Malang – Since its inception two months ago, the Commission of Truth and Friendship has reported no progress in its mission to identify those responsible for past human rights violations in what was then East Timor.

Dili – The first newspaper to be published in East Timor's two official languages – Tetum and Portuguese – has ceased publication after failing to achieve sufficiently high circulation.

The weekly "Lia Foun" disappeared from newsstands Friday in Dili after being launched in May leaving only one weekly title, the Portuguese-language "Jornal Nacional Semanario".

Reporter: Nick McKenzie

Peter Cave: The Defence Force is being accused by one of its own of misusing national security and secrecy laws to stop the publication of a book, because it was deemed overly critical of the Federal Government.

Sydney – It's been 30 years since five Australia-based newsmen were gunned down in the East Timorese border town of Balibo. It's been 30 years since their bodies were dragged into a room, doused in petrol and set alight.

The family of a Scots journalist brutally murdered in a war zone are demanding that Tony Blair helps them get justice – 30 years after his death.

Max Lane – An eight-month election process for village councils has finished in East Timor. Although the village councils have no power and are primarily vehicles through which local people can articulate their opinions, the elections were contested by almost all parties.

Dili – Indonesia and its former territory East Timor may seek foreign funding for their Commission of Truth and Friendship investigating past bloodshed, East Timor's Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said Monday.

Dili – President Xanana Gusmco told lawmakers in East Timor Monday to make fuller use of their constitutional rights to challenge in parliament the actions of the Dili government.

Speaking at the official opening of parliament, Gusmco said he hoped Timor's MPs would be even more "productive and efficient" during the new session.

Six years ago today, Australian armed forces lead a multinational peacekeeping force (INTERFET) to East Timor to restore order and provide security for the transition to independence, but the Timor Sea Justice Campaign, today claimed the Howard Government is undoing the good work by taking gas and oil that belongs to the world's newest nation.

Sydney – East Timorese president Xanana Gusmao says pursuing Indonesian generals through the courts for atrocities committed years ago won't provide justice.

Launching his book Timor Lives today in Sydney, Gusmao said the people of East Timor backed a fight for the truth and a just account of history.

Jill Jolliffe – A witness to the killing of five journalists in Balibo, East Timor, in 1975 has died in Dili months before a new inquiry by the NSW Coroner's Court.

Olandino Maia Guterres accused former Indonesian minister Yunus Yosfiah in 1998 of ordering the deaths of the five television reporters after they filmed an attack on the border town.

Ellen Nakashima, Liquica – On the day he disappeared, Jacinto da Costa Canisio Pereira, a local resistance leader, stood in a priest's bedroom and prayed, his brother recalled. "I wanted to stay, to die with my brother," said Graciano Pires dos Santos.

Jakarta – Indonesia's Supreme Court has upheld the acquittal of a former police officer charged with gross human rights violations in connection with two massacres in East Timor in 1999, an official said today.

Marguerita Choy, Paris – Australia expects to finalise a deal with East Timor in the next few months that will split the revenue from the disputed Greater Sunrise gas field, a government official said on Tuesday.

Nigel Wilson – A technical argument about what activities may occur between the sea bed and the surface of the joint petroleum development area in the Timor Sea is now believed to be the only hurdle stopping a revenue-sharing agreement between Australia and East Timor.

Dili – The top two leaders of East Timor on Monday separately said that, should the need arise, they were ready to appear in international courts judging past human rights violations.

"For violence from 1987 onwards, others should not have any headaches because I am the one who is prepared to account for them," President Xanana Gusmao told journalists here.

This is a powerful and moving reminder of the horrors visited on East Timor, a tiny scrap of land that was exploited and neglected by its Portuguese colonisers for 420 years, repeatedly butchered and raped by the Indonesians from 1975 on, and now enjoys a precarious independence as the newest, and one of the poorest, countries on earth.

Speaking after the sixth anniversary of East Timor's referendum on independence, Timor Sea Justice Campaign co-ordinator Tom Clarke, labelled the Australian Government's current obsession with so called Australian values as "some type of twisted joke."

Tom Allard – Indonesia's intelligence services recruited a senior, long-serving Australian spy whose role as a double agent was eventually unearthed but did not lead to prosecution, a new book alleges.

In the last of his series on East Timor, Simon Montlake looks at the Thorny topic of oil and gas

His morning catch sold, fisherman Antonio Ximenes folds his homemade nets into the boat resting on the windswept beach.

Robin Perry and Eleanor Taylor-Nicholson – On August 11, the governments of Indonesia and East Timor formally launched the joint Truth and Friendship Commission at its headquarters on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

Six years ago this month the Indonesian military unleashed its militia killers on East Timor, creating carnage that shocked the world and saw Australia intervene to drive them out.

His Excellency Kofi Annan
Secretary-General
The United Nations
1 United Nations Plaza
New York, New York 10017-3515

August 22, 2005

Dear Mr. Secretary-General:

As details begin to emerge of the proposed deal between East Timor and Australia on how to divvy up the Greater Sunrise gas field located twice as close to East Timor than Australia, it's clear that our impoverished neighbours will be walking away short-changed.

Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the Security Council continues to delay consideration of a detailed United Nations (UN) report on the prosecution of serious violations of human rights committed in Timor-Leste in 1999.

Nigel Wilson – East Timor has launched an international campaign to attract explorers to the Timor Sea in areas not in dispute with Australia.

A roadshow will begin next month to sell the results of 6600km of seismic data collected earlier this year that the East Timor Government claimed "revealed the presence of potential petroleum structures over the entire area".

Michael McKenna – Allegations of corruption against East Timor's Government were largely unfounded and based on rumour, according to its Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta.

Denpasar – The leaders of Indonesia and East Timor launched a truth commission into the violence that marred the push for independence in what is now the world's youngest nation.

Sibylle Kaczorek, Sydney – On August 2, Sister Susan Connelly, assistant director of the Mary MacKillop Institute for East Timor Studies, said that "fairness" should be the overarching principle in the David versus Goliath stand-off that characterises the "negotiations" about the gas and oil deposits in the Timor Sea.

Comrades,

Kuta – The truth commission looking into Jakarta's bloody handling of East Timor's push for independence has a tough job ahead of it, the chairman of the newly established body said Friday after its first meeting.

Indonesia and East Timor have formally opened a truth commission to look into Jakarta's bloody handling of Timor's independence vote in 1999.

Dili – East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta has said he is convinced that none of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) members would accept the presence of an International Human Rights Court for human rights violation cases in East Timor.

Jakarta – A number of non-government organisations (NGOs) have declared their opposition to the formation of the Indonesia-East Timor Truth and Friendship Commission (KPP). Aside from being little more than a political tool for the perpetrators of crimes can evade justice, the NGOs believe that the commission will become a political bargaining tool for Indonesia and East Timor.

Max Lane – East Timor's local elections are now in their eighth month. In Aileu, close to Dili, the Socialist Party of Timor (PST) achieved second place after Fretilin, pushing the Democrat Party into third place. Overall, in the districts contested so far, the PST has been averaging third position, up from the sixth place it achieved in the 2001 elections.

Jon Lamb – On July 25, Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins, a leading intelligence expert on East Timor and Indonesia, blew the whistle on the Australian Defence Force's intelligence manipulation and cover-ups in East Timor in 1999.