East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao prepared to head to Portugal Thursday after a "positive" round of meetings in Washington, including talks with President George Bush.

Rumours a captured pro-Indonesian militiaman was summarily executed by Australian troops in East Timor had floated around special forces circles for some time, a defence commentator said today.

Jane Counsel – The key players developing gas resources in the Timor Sea have urged the Federal Government to ratify the Timor Sea Treaty without delay or risk losing billions of dollars in revenue.

[The Australian government has begun four days of hearings into the Timor Sea Treaty it signed with East Timor on the day of that country's declaration of independence in May this year. The Treaty covers the Joint Petroleum Development Area in the Timor Sea from which East Timor will earn most of its income for the foreseeable future.

Rachel S.

Geneva – Newly-independent Timor -Leste, formerly East Timor, has just 47 doctors for its 850,000 citizens because of large-scale emigration, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Ray Brindal, Canberra – East Timor doesn't recognize a claim by PetroTimor Comphanhia de Petroleos SARL over energy-rich concessions in the Timor Sea, according to a senior East Timor government official.

East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao on 27 September marked his country's admission as the UN's 191st member with a defence of the right to independence of both the Palestinians and the people of the Western Sahara.

Irwin Arieff, United Nations – The tiny Southeast Asian nation of East Timor, the first country to be born in the 21st century, won a seat at the United Nations on Friday, swelling the world body's membership to 191.

Dili – East Timor becomes the 191st member of the United Nations on Friday, an historic day for the world's newest nation after a bloody transition from Indonesian rule, but East Timorese complain it will pass virtually unnoticed in their own land.

New York – On the eve of East Timor's joining the United Nations, the president of the former Indonesian-held territory said he would not advise other regions to use armed struggles as their route to independence.

Jane Counsel – A former top executive with US oil and gas group Unocal is set to reopen the debate about the Sunrise gasfield in the Timor Sea by arguing its gas should be piped to East Timor, not Darwin.

New York – East Timor's fragile peace will only hold if the international community continues to provide assistance and not abandon the country, said the fledgling nation's foreign minister.

East Timor, which gained independence from Indonesia through a United Nations-backed referendum in 1999, is desperately poor and heavily dependent on foreign aid.

Robson Seth – "Kill the police" were the only words part-time soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Hart, could understand, as he faced an angry mob of East Timorese dissidents.

Sophie Douez, Canberra – The Federal Government yesterday denied refugee claims to 168 East Timorese who fled the then-Indonesian territory seeking asylum in Australia almost a decade ago.

[Indonesia is moving to settle its maritime border issues with East Timor and is keen to see Australia do the same, according to a senior government advisor. East Timor is keen to renegotiate its maritime boundaries with Australia to maximise its share of the rich Timor Sea oil and gas resources, a move Australia is resisting.

Dili – East Timor's Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta has said that despite his country's 24-year struggle for freedom from Indonesian rule, it would not support independence movements in Aceh, Papua and other restive parts of Indonesia.

Ray Brindal Canberra – East Timor has been poorly dealt with by Australia and companies wanting to develop vast natural gas resources in the Timor Sea, John Imle, a former president and former vice president of US- based energy company Unocal Corp., said this week.

The leader of East Timor's Catholic community, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, appealed Monday to Portugal's people to give more help to his country, whose situation, he said, is "worse than before independence".

The Federal Defence Minister says Australian military commitment to peacekeeping in East Timor will be phased out over the next 18 months.

Senator Robert Hill was in Darwin yesterday to farewell soldiers heading to East Timor in a peacekeeping role. Included in the battalion is Alpha Company, manned largely by reservists.

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – New Zealand's Labour Government is the latest to reveal the skeletons in its closet over Indonesia's 1975 East Timor invasion, but the Melbourne family of a Wellington-born cameraman killed there says it is not satisfied.

Ray Lilley, Wellington – East Timor President Xanana Gusmao has called on the international community not to forget his tiny new nation, which became the 191st member of the United Nations in late May.

Jakarta – The Indonesian government and international agencies have agreed that as of December 31 this year, all East Timorese refugee camps in West Timor will be shut down.

Geoffrey Barker – East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao yesterday criticised the heavily armed Australian army presence in front of the Australian embassy in Dili and demanded that Australia co-ordinate this with the East Timor Government.

Mr Gusmao's criticism was published as the main front-page article in the Timor Post newspaper.

Munir, Jakarta – The first round of the ad hoc Human Rights Tribunal on the East Timor case ended in anticlimax as the suspects of crimes against humanity were mostly acquitted from all charges. The verdict cast by the first human rights court conducted in this republic's history carries a danger that we may not have taken seriously.

Keith Moor – East Timor is in danger of being infiltrated by crime gangs intent on using it as a stepping stone to Australia.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said his force was working with the East Timorese Government to lessen the risks.

Canberra – Australia reopened its embassy in East Timor on Monday after it was closed following a threat against Australian interests in the fledgling nation but said travellers should remain on alert.

Jakarta – Unsure about the outcome of reconciliation attempts by former pro-Indonesia fighters, leaders of East Timorese people in squalid camps in Belu, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), have started urging refugees to participate in transmigration programs to other parts of the country.

Jakarta – The new government in East Timor would try to heal the psychological trauma suffered by many of its people in the 1999 violence when Indonesia withdrew from the territory, the country's health minister said.

Keith Moor – Victorian officers attached to the United Nations found the graves of 24 massacre victims and will this month start exhuming the bodies.

They have identified the senior militia members responsible for torturing and killing the pro-independence Timorese villagers.

Audrey Young – Jose Ramos-Horta, East Timor's Foreign Minister, is everything his country is not: highly educated, sophisticated and stylish.

For 25 years he roamed the globe as an international spokesman for East Timorese independence, acquiring degrees, a doctorate and a Nobel Peace Prize on the way.

Nick O'malley – Fresh out of a Dili jail, Edit Horta, sister-in-law of East Timor's foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta, island-hopped to Darwin in 1994.

She was pregnant and had an eight-year-old son in tow, but the need to escape Indonesia's oppressive rule and be reunited with her three daughters, who escaped two years earlier, kept her going.

A Dili court has sentenced a Timorese man who belonged to a pro-Indonesian militia to twenty years imprisonment for three murders that he committed in 1999, it was announced Wednesday.

Sharon Labi, Fatuk-Hun – The red juice of the betel nut stains her teeth and runs down her chin, settling in the cracks of her lips and the wrinkles of her weathered face. Maria Jose Barrato has no idea how old she is; her guess is at least 80, and it shows.

Sharon Labi, Dili – They idolise Britney Spears, watch lots of TV and worry about what to wear to school. But one disturbing truth sets these teenage girls apart from others their age – most have been raped and many have witnessed the torture and murder of family members.

An Indonesian prosecutor has proposed that controversial human rights trials be moved to Dili, the capital of neighbouring East Timor.

Prosecutor Gabriel Simangunsong says it is difficult to get witnesses from the fledgling country to testify in Jakarta.

Dan Murphy, Wonosobo – Maya Friera's letter home is filled with re-assurances for her parents. The 8-year-old promises she's studying hard and saying her prayers every day.

East Timor's foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta says the country's fledgling judicial and prison systems are frail because there are insufficient judges.

He has told Radio New Zealand that judges appointed by the United Nations two years ago were without basic education in law and only a few had law degrees.

Jamie Walker – According to the army, it began as a Melbourne Cup day joke. Hot and bored, a group of Australian soldiers spotted two Timorese boys herding water buffalo along a sun-blasted street fronting the Battalion Support Group compound in Dili, East Timor.

A private wrapped a US dollar note around a rock and threw it to the children.

A special fund to compensate former Indonesian government employees and pensioners in East Timor expects to make its first payments next month, a founder of the fund said Monday.

Phil Goff – The Foreign Minister Phil Goff says it is a matter of shame that New Zealand, Australia and the United States did not strongly oppose the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in the 1970's.

He has released classified papers on the invasion ahead of visits this month by the Timorese President Xanana Gusmao and foreign minister Dr Jose Ramos-Horta.

Jakarta – The Indonesian government will host the 55th session of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee for South-East Asia Region on September 11-13, according to an official release here Thursday.

[It's three years since the violence that accompanied East Timor's vote for independence. Then, thousands of men, women and children fled at gunpoint to the relative safety of West Timor and beyond. Now, most have returned to play their part in rebuilding East Timor. But some can't come home.

Vannessa Hearman – On August 15 an Indonesian court convicted Abilio Soares, the former Jakarta-appointed governor of East Timor, of failing to rein in subordinates in September 1999 as pro-Jakarta militias rampaged, killing at least 1000 East Timorese.

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo has called to East Timor's political leaders and the international community to begin moves to establish an international court to try those responsible for the violence in Timor in 1999.

Dili – The fledgling nation of East Timor risks being exploited by organized crime and developing institutionalized corruption, because of its poverty and rudimentary legal system.

The head of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Kelty, said Sunday East Timor could be vulnerable to drug traffickers, money launderers and those engaged in the sexual exploitation of children.

East Timor's religious leader has said that the Timorese people are "disenchanted" after three months of independence.

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo was cited by a Chilean newspaper Monday as saying that the Timorese, "are now suffering disenchantment and disillusion, as they thought that with independence, they would obtain all".

Mari Alkatiri – It is a truism of the developing world that the blessing of petroleum wealth can be a curse. Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela and many other countries have learnt this the hard way.

[Kirsty Sword was a resistance fighter who became the First Lady. Now comes the hard part. Susan Wyndham profiles the wife of the East Timorese leader.]

[The following review of Don Greenlees and Robert Garran, "Deliverance: The Inside Story of East Timor's Fight for Freedom" (Allen & Unwin), is by John Martinkus. It was published in Australian Book Review, September 2002, No 244, pp 24-5, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of both the author and of the Editor, Mr Peter Rose.]