East Timorese freedom campaigners are mourning the death of a leading Australian human rights activist, Dr Andrew McNaughtan.
The 50-year-old was found dead in his Mosman home in Sydney's north on Christmas Eve after friends and neighbours noticed he had not been seen for some days.
Andrew Hewett – Governments from around the world gathered in East Timor recently to hear news of a looming economic crisis facing the world's newest nation.
This crisis is triggered by declining foreign aid and uncertainty about future revenue flows to East Timor from the oil and gas fields of the Timor Sea.
Dili – President Xanana Gusmco challenged East Timor's parliament Monday to make 2004 "the year of stability" for the newly independent nation.
Atambua – Indonesian military and police personnel assigned to the border regions shared by Indonesia and East Timor have shown reformed attitudes in accordance with current era of reforms, a local legislator has said.
Jill Jolliffe, Dili – The minister known as the strongman in East Timor's Government wept like a child as he confessed publicly to beating a prisoner during the 1975 civil war.
Patrick Walters – East Timor is calling for the United Nations to deploy a 400-strong paramilitary force at least until 2006 to bolster its tiny security forces.
As East Timor continues to delve into its painful past, there's been a suprising confession from Timor's last European governor. During this week's final hearings at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Major General Mario Lemos Pires publically admitted that Portugal failed to prepare the former territory for democracy.
Presenter/Interviewer: James Panichi
East Timor's tiny military has discharged 27 soldiers and will soon fire more than 60 others for being absent without leave or skipping training, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The country's 1,500-strong East Timor Defense Force is slowly taking over responsibilities from UN peacekeepers in the newly independent nation.
Jill Jolliffe, Dili – In the hope that the seasonal spirit will prevail, East Timor's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is asking former political leaders to seek forgiveness for triggering the civil war that paved the way for Indonesia's bloody 1975 invasion.
Rob Taylor – An East Timorese human rights crimes court today sentenced a former member of Indonesia's military to 11 years in jail for murder and torture committed during the wave of violence which followed the country's 1999 independence vote.
Since gaining independence in 2002, the people of East Timor have struggled with the legacy of violence of Indonesia's 24-year occupation. Now they are being asked to turn their minds to what many people was an even more disturbing chapter of country's recent history.
Australia will leave some 50 to 60 troops to assist with training of the East Timorese military once the peacekeeping force comes home, defence chief General Peter Cosgrove said today. He rejected suggestions that Australia could continue to deploy peacekeepers beyond the end of the United Nations mandate on May 20.
Cynthia Banham – East Timor has accused Australia of dragging its feet in talks over billions of dollars in oil and gas rights under the Timor Sea.
Michelle Nichols, Canberra – East Timor appealed to the United Nations Wednesday not to desert the world's newest nation by diverting its assistance to flashpoints like Iraq and Afghanistan.
An East Timor court has jailed a former Indonesian army sergeant for crimes against humanity during the territory's bloody breakaway from Jakarta.
It is the first time a soldier has been convicted of such an offence since trials began two years ago.
Canberra – East Timor Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta has demanded Australia halt development of massive natural gas fields in the Timor Sea until a dispute over their ownership is settled.
Ramos Horta said Australia should not exploit resources potentially worth billions of dollars before a treaty detailing how they will be distributed is finalised.
Canberra – East Timor Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta said Wednesday it is too soon to fret over the final shape of a permanent maritime boundary between his impoverished nation and Australia.
Chris White – Not 8 hours into this day and google retrieved over 100 American news articles that have been published commemorating the day that will forever live in infamy. 62 years ago today, 2,400 Americans lost their lives in Pearl Harbor.
Kupang – Twenty-six East Timorese who have been seeking asylum in Belu district since last October have sent a petition to President Megawati Soekarnoputri asking for protection and expressing their objections to being deported.
Mark Colvin: In East Timor, thousands of people remain in the grip of an acute food shortage, and now face a bleak and hungry Christmas. A severe drought has left much of the country parched and barren, with some crops declared a complete failure. But although the long dry has now ended, the food crisis is unlikely to ease until at least March, as Anne Barker reports.
Rachel Kleinman – Yarra's East Timorese asylum-seekers face a miserable Christmas unless their appeals for residency are resolved.
About 700 of Australia's 1700 East Timorese asylum-seekers live in the City of Yarra. Most have been through painstaking and drawn-out application processes for residency during the past 18 months.
Nigel Wilson – Production from the Bayu Undan gas recycling project in the Timor Sea has been delayed at least eight months with implications for East Timor's revenues running into millions of dollars.
And the production postponement could hit Santos, the only Australian participant, because of a later contribution to its income from its 10.64 per cent stake.
Eighteen months ago East Timor became the world's newest nation, but the euphoria of the independence celebrations is now long over.
Peter Kammerer – East Timorese look at Iraq in wonderment. Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and investment are pouring into the still unstable Persian Gulf nation, while promised international contributions to their peaceful young democracy have dried up to barely a trickle.
Dili – A Timorese militiaman was convicted Wednesday of crimes against humanity and sentenced to nine years in jail for killing three independence supporters and torturing others during the country's bloody break from Indonesia's 24-year occupation.
It was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration to mark the death of a fellow East Timorese activists.
Instead, Simplisio Celestino de Deus remembers how Indonesian troops indiscriminately opened fire on 3,000 unarmed protesters on November 12, 1991. Troops then stormed into the Santa Cruz cemetery, bayonetted survivors and hauled off the dead bodies in trucks.
Jill Jolliffe, Darwin – A United Nations official has pointed the finger at the UN police command for its failure to intervene effectively during riots in East Timor last December.
A UN report just released also said East Timorese police had been unco-operative in an investigation into the riots.
Post-independence confidence in East Timor has declined, with nearly 40 per cent of East Timorese saying they feel worse off now than under Indonesian rule and less than half optimistic about the future, according to a survey.
Canberra – East Timor's prime minister Friday accused Australia of deliberately dragging out talks aimed at bolstering his impoverished nation's share of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas under the sea dividing the two nations.
Frederik Balfour – Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao became President of the world's newest country, East Timor in May, 2002. A veteran guerrilla leader against the 24-year Indonesian occupation of his country, Gusmao faces the challenge of managing the peace for 750,000 people in an impoverished but oil-rich country.
Dili – Thousands of people gathered Wednesday to remember the victims of one of East Timor's worst massacres under Indonesian rule with a moment of silence and flowers as well as demands for an investigation to find the perpetrators.
Australia is refusing to set a deadline for talks beginning today with its neighbour East Timor on their contentious maritime borders. East Timor is contesting the boundaries set under a 1972 agreement between Australia and Indonesia when East Timor was ruled by Portugal.
Canberra – Australia and East Timor began talks on Wednesday aimed at settling a bitter dispute over carving up the seabed between the two nations, which holds billions of dollars worth of oil and gas reserves.
Nigel Wilson – Australia is refusing to give East Timor a timetable for reaching a permanent maritime boundary between the two countries that could affect ownership of billions of dollars in oil and gas reserves.
Damien Kingsbury, Melbourne – As the United Nations winds down its presence in East Timor ahead of next May's departure, the fledgling state is still wrestling with forces that could offer it a stable future or, should matters not be well managed, tear it apart. More than ever, East Timor's future is in the balance.
Jill Jolliffe, Dili – East Timorese politicians are hoping a formal headcount to identify former pro-independence guerillas will end their discontent and return them to the social mainstream.
Unemployed veterans who say their role in the fight for independence from Indonesia has not been recognised are a potential destabilising force for East Timor.
Sydney – Australia has denied bullying its tiny Pacific neighbour East Timor Tuesday as the nations prepared for talks on finalising a contentious martime border that will determine how billions of dollars in revenues from Timor Sea gas fields is split.
The first lady of East Timor, Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, has urged Australia to consider the plight of the fledgeling nation when negotiations begin later this week on establishing maritime boundaries.
From a correspondent in Dili – East Timor introduced its own coins today, hoping to spur economic development and create a symbol for the country following its hard-won independence from Indonesia two years ago.
Sandra McLean – During East Timor's independence struggle, few men were more revered than Xanana Gusmao, the leader of the resistance movement. Gusmao was like a god to his people – now he is the president of East Timor, which was declared an independent nation in 2002 after 27 years of Indonesian control.
Louise Williams – The quest for justice for East Timor's victims of human rights abuses under Indonesian military occupation is in effect over. The Government in Dili is making reconciliation with its former ruler an absolute priority.
Just four years after the vote for independence in East Timor, the country's first lady, Kirsty Sword Gusmao, believes the country's peace is still too fragile to enter into the politics of the region.
Dili – East Timor's governing Fretilin party has lost electoral support but retains majority backing after nearly 18 months in power, according to the country's first political poll, sources told Lusa Thursday.
Louis Beckerling – East Timor president Xanana Gusmao warned Asian business leaders yesterday that if people in the poorest countries of the region were left without food, there could be no peace and security.
For several years stories have been circulating, mostly unpublished, concerning claims that Australian soldiers were engaged in acts of torture of militia prisoners in East Timor in 1999. All of those claims were dismissed by internal defence force inquiries but no details of the allegations or the evidence have ever been publicly available.
Linda Mottram: Australian troops in East Timor are preparing for the pull out of UN peacekeepers next year. They're handing over key duties to the country's new military, though there are warnings from East Timor's leaders that the country's fledgling forces are not yet capable of defending their own borders.
Our Correspondent Mark Bowling reports from Dili.
Kupang – A top East Timorese community leader in Indonesia, Armindo Soares, said a lot of East Timorese refugees who participated in the repatriation program returned to Indonesia.
Deborah Snow – Fresh allegations of torture by Australian troops in East Timor will be made in tonight's SBS Dateline program, with former militia members claiming they were beaten, kicked, and had their heads forced down excrement-filled toilet bowls during interrogation.
Kirsty Sword Gusmao, the Australian-born first lady of the world's newest nation, once shared two of her husband's big dreams for an independent East Timor then, when the long battle had been won, to settle down to a rural life growing pumpkins and breeding animals.
["A Woman of Independence". By Kirsty Sword Gusmao. Macmillan, 321pp, $30.]