Tim Dodd – Dili, which becomes the capital of the independent state of East Timor at midnight this Sunday, is a relatively prosperous town for a developing country.
And Dili is the only place in East Timor which most of the VIP visitors will see when they arrive for this weekend's independence celebrations.
Joanne Collins, Dili – Paint is being slapped on fences, scaffolding is coming down from buildings, weeds are being ripped up and soccer fields are getting new goal posts.
Asia's newest nation has been officially listed by the UN as the poorest country in the region. But many see East Timor's economic future as being dependent on the deal it strikes with Australia over oil and gas reserves in the East Timor Sea.
Stephanie Coop – After a lifetime dedicated to fighting for a free East Timor, Jacinto Alves will finally see his country move to full independence Monday, when the United Nations' transitional administration steps aside to make way for the country's first democratically elected government.
Don Greenlees, Dili – Francisco Alves voted in favour of East Timor remaining a part of Indonesia in the 1999 referendum on independence. When the vote went the other way, 10 families from the small coastal village of Ulmera, including his own, decided to flee across the border into West Timor.
Rod McGuirk – East Timor has a good chance of becoming financially independent in a few years through Timor Sea energy royalties, the World Bank told donor nations yesterday.
Delegates from 27 countries, including Australia, met in Dili today to consider East Timor's extraordinary request for $US77 million in direct budgetary aid for its first year of independence.
Jon Land – On the eve of East Timor's independence on May 20, the crucial issue of the Timor Gap has still to be fully resolved. East Timor may lose billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties if the Australian government and the large petrochemical companies get their way.
John Martinkus, Kupang – On the outskirts of the West Timorese capital, Kupang, a dusty former bus terminal still serves as the home for some of the estimated 60,000 East Timorese refugees who have not returned home.
Chris Brummitt, Dili – Children in East Timor are having trouble getting their tongues around their new official language. After years of speaking Indonesian, they now are having to learn Portuguese, the language of the territory's former rulers.
Former Indonesian militia leader Eurico Guterres is being questioned in Jakarta today at the trials of 18-military, police and civilian officials accused of human rights abuses in East Timor. But a new report released by the International Crisis Group has described the trials as a farce.
Tim Dodd – The infant Government of East Timor is supposed to have a car registration system and, indeed, there are plenty of vehicles on the road sporting the new TLS plates standing for Timor Loro Sae, as the country is known in the local Tetum language.
Nusa Dua, Bali – Udayana Military Commander Maj. Gen. Willem T. Da Costa, who oversees Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara provinces, warned on Monday pro-Indonesia East Timorese in East Nusa Tenggara against staging demonstrations on May 20, the day of East Timor's independence.
jakarta – A civilian and policeman testified on Monday at the trial of four soldiers and one policeman accused of gross human rights violations in East Timor in 1999 that they saw all the defendants at the scene of the church incident in Suai.
Michael Richardson, Bacau – Marito Reis spent nearly 15 years in Indonesian prisons after he was arrested in 1980 for being a member of the clandestine underground movement supporting the small band of armed guerrillas fighting for the independence of East Timor.
Joanne Collins, Dili – Tiny East Timor, counting down to its independence in a few days, is Asia's poorest country and will need considerable international assistance in the years ahead, the United Nations said on Monday.
As East Timor readies for independence on 20 May, Jakarta correspondent Richard Galpin writes that most of those who wreaked terrible violence after the 1999 vote to end Indonesian rule still walk free.
"It is not to get justice for the victims, it's just lip service" Human rights lawyer Johnson Panjaitan
Chris McCall at Mota Ain, the Timor border – Torn between tears and smiles, the refugees line up with all their worldly goods and wait to go home. Some are even bringing their dead.
Waiting to cross the frontier to his native East Timor, Mateas Soares has little to say except that he has to go home. "It is my place of birth. I have to go back," said the father of four.
Philip Sherwell, Maliana – In a calculated snub to the United Nations and Europe, the prime suspect in the murder of a Financial Times journalist in East Timor in 1999 returned to the territory last week as part of an official Indonesian military delegation on a goodwill visit.
Chris McCall in Noelbaki Camp, West Timor – Among decrepit huts, a few hundred disgruntled and demoralised East Timorese militiamen are pondering a bleak future, a shadow of the terror they once were.
Tim Dodd, Dili – Commodity markets are doing no favours for East Timor, which becomes an independent nation next weekend, with prices for coffee, its most valued agricultural product, languishing in the doldrums.
However, the answer may be as simple as plain vanilla, a product which grows in the same cool, tropical highlands as coffee but can sell for 200 times as much.
Tiarma Siboro and Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta – An Indonesian Military (TNI) general said on Wednesday that the United Nations had a share of the blame in the violence and human rights violations before, during and after the UN-organized referendum in East Timor in August 1999.
New York (CNS) – A "new consciousness of democratic ideals" and "assertive nationalism" is emerging in East Timor, said Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo of Dili, East Timor.
[Ivete D'Oliveira began working with CIIR's Women's Advocacy Programme in August 2001. She talked to Catherine Scott about her work and about the experiences of East Timorese women in the transition to independence.]
Rowan Callick – The human rights trials under way in Jakarta over the events in East Timor in 1999 are reinforcing the near-universal image in Indonesia of the conflict as a civil war between equally matched Timorese factions, with Indonesian security forces as bystanders.
Paul Knox – Most poor countries are in hock to rich ones. This is not necessarily a bad thing, any more than a car loan or a mortgage. But overindebtedness is definitely a bad thing. And too many countries have too much debt – often the result of irresponsible behaviour by their own leaders, foreign lenders or both.
Three witnesses told the Human Rights Tribunal on Tuesday that they saw a number of people in military uniform burying victims of a massacre in a mass grave in Metamauk village in Wemasa, Belu, East Nusa Tenggara, in 1999.
East Timor's Truth and Reconciliation Commission faces huge problems, not least a long local tradition of revenge, writes Hamish McDonald.
East Timorese exiles in Indonesia could help lead a revolt in their former homeland if leaders of the newly-independent nation fail to bring prosperity, an exiles' leader said.
"People in the villages can't pay for their kids' schooling, can't pay for medicine," said Armindo Soares Mariano, acting head of Uni Timor Aswain (UNTAS).
Jennifer Hewett And Jane Counsel – Woodside is caught in another hot debate. A year ago, the hot political issue facing Clare Martin was her promise to end mandatory sentencing for juveniles. That was if Labor won government in the Northern Territory. Not that anyone expected it to least of all Clare Martin herself.
Indonesia's army chief has urged his countrymen to forget their traumatic past with East Timor and embrace its sovereignty, amid lingering bitterness about the territory's breakaway.
Don Greenlees, Jakarta – Three years after East Timor was laid waste by Indonesian military-sponsored militia, the country's President-elect, Xanana Gusmao, declared yesterday that justice for the perpetrators would take a back seat to social development in the priorities of the first independent East Timorese Government.
East Timor's president-elect Xanana Gusmao met Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in Jakarta to personally invite her to attend his country's independence celebrations later this month.
[Daniel Casey was on hand to watch the world's newest country, and our neighbour, embark upon the road to democracy with its people tackling the ballot box for the very first time.]
Mark Baker – East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta has ruled out any backing for separatist movements within Indonesia once the country achieves its independence next month.
Jakarta – The Indonesian Military (TNI)/National Police faction in the House of Representatives (DPR) has taken the same position as the House's Commission I for political and security affairs, rejecting a visit by President Megawati Soekarnoputri to East Timor next month, according to reports.
Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – Witnesses in their testimony on Thursday highlighted a clear link between civilian guards roaming East Timor in the run-up to 1999 ballot and military forces, saying local authorities established and recruited the paramilitary force.
Jakarta – Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri will attend East Timor's landmark independence handover on May 20, despite strong opposition from MPs.
"Ms Mega is planning to attend. I repeat, Ms Mega is planning to be present" at the celebrations, top security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Tuesday, according to the state Antara news agency.
Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – A witness in the human rights trial into the East Timor mayhem said on Wednesday that top state officials in Jakarta should have been held accountable for the violence that ravaged the former Indonesian province in 1999.
General Kofi Annan recommended Tuesday that the Security Council approve a new UN mission for East Timor to last two years beyond its independence, slated for May 20. The proposed mandate, dubbed UN Mission to Support East Timor (UNMISET), would center on aiding good governance and assuring domestic and border security.
Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – A witness testified before the ongoing Human Rights Court on Tuesday that he was ordered by his superior to bury at least 25 bodies, including three Catholic priests, after a massacre at St. Ave Maria Church in Suai town, Covalima regency, East Timor on September 6, 1999.
Name: Jose Alexandre Gusmao
Nom-de-guerre: Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao
Date of Birth: 20 June 1946
Place of Birth: Manatuto, East Timor
Phil Zabriskie – Who is Xanana Gusmao? A Portuguese journalist put that question to Gusmao himself shortly before he was captured by the Indonesian military in November 1992. The answer, a celebrated freedom fighter battling a brutal oppressor, seemed plain to most everyone – except to the freedom fighter himself.
Jakarta – A soldier told Indonesia's new human rights court Tuesday he was asked by his commanding officer to transport and bury bodies from a church massacre in East Timor, among the worst of atrocities that followed a 1999 vote for independence..
Dili's interim government has approved a USD 75 million budget for East Timor's first year as an independent state.
The East Timor Action Network (ETAN) described Friday's UN Commission on Human Rights statement on East Timor as "a rotten birthday present for the soon-to-be independent nation."
The Chairperson's Statement on the Situation in Human Rights in East Timor was issued in Geneva today.
Hamish McDonald – Dressed in dun-brown overalls and boots, Fitar dos Reis, Gil Nelson Belo and Gulio Freitas line up under the baking afternoon sun to take their place on a mat and practise loading an M-9 machine-gun.
Jakarta – Indonesia's president will attend next month's independence celebration in the country's former territory East Timor, a palace spokesman said Saturday.
Tim Dodd, Dili – With independence only a month off, how bad is the economic problem facing East Timor?
Tim Dodd, Dili – In Dili's old commercial heart is an Javanese bakso (meatball soup) restaurant that does a thriving trade at $US1 a bowl, proving the East Timorese have not lost their taste for the food of the oppressors.
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta – Defendants in alleged crimes against humanity in East Timor blamed on Thursday the policy of then president B.J. Habibie as the origin of all the troubles that occurred during East Timor's struggle for independence from Indonesia in 1999.