Jim Wolf, Washington – US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave late Indonesian strongman Suharto the green light for the 1975 invasion of East Timor that left perhaps 200,000 dead, according to previously secret documents made available on Thursday.

Jakarta – Former deputy commander of the East Timorese pro-integration fighters (PPI), Eurico Guterres, on Thursday registered with the Central Jakarta court a class action against former president, BJ Habibie, to pay 1 trillion rupiah in indemnity.

East Timor4s chief minister, Mari Alkatiri, has expressed concern over mounting domestic violence against women, urging his people to put an end to such practices as part of the territory4s larger efforts at reconciliation.

Richard C. Paddock, Dili – The girl's nightmare began when she was 13 and a pro-Indonesia militia burned down her village. Her parents were away from home when gunmen herded her and her neighbors across the border into the Indonesian province of West Timor.

Nigel Wilson – A new wave of confidence is emerging that East Timor and Australia within weeks will reach agreement on key aspects of future development of Timor Sea gas reserves.

Jill Jolliffem Dili – Just a block away from the imposing United Nations building that dominates the Dili waterfront, two East Timorese girls are soliciting outside Tom's Place, a recently opened Australian bar. Some off-duty UN policemen stroll by, stop to consider the offer, then walk on.

Dili – The threat of violence from pro-Indonesian militias opposed to East Timor's independence has decreased significantly, raising hopes that thousands of peacekeepers may soon be able to go home, a U.N official said Friday

Don Greenlees, Jakarta – Militia groups opposed to East Timor's separation from Indonesia are a spent force, incapable of presenting a military threat across the border from West Timor, according to Western diplomats and military officers.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – East Timor's charismatic leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao and former pro-Jakarta militia leader Joao Tavares agreed on Tuesday to end their hostility and to work together for peace in East Timor through reconciliation.

Xanana and Tavares reached the agreement in a closed-door meeting in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara.

Canberra – Indonesia and Australia will set up a tripartite consultative forum to help East Timor solve problems that may arise in its transformation into an independent state, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda said here Wedensday.

Dili – With East Timor due to become the world's newest nation in six months, hundreds of people rallied Wednesday to mark the territory's first declaration of independence 26 years ago.

Waving East Timorese flags, about 500 people listened to speeches by leading politicians before raising their fists in salute East Timor's largest political party, Fretilin.

The Constituent Assembly today approved a motion recommending that East Timor's first presidential election be held in the first or second week of April 2002, and that the voting process be universal, direct, and secret.

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – Indonesian authorities say they do not regard last year's Memorandum of Understanding between East Timor and Indonesia on transfer of prisoners as valid, East Timor's new Prosecutor-General has said.

Don Greenlees, Jakarta – United Nations prosecutors in East Timor have lodged an indictment against 21 people, including senior Indonesian military, militia and government officials, over the massacre in the Catholic church in the town of Liquica in April 1999.

Paul Osborne Brisbane – The problems of East Timorese refugees in West Timor and the disarmament of militia should be resolved within three months, the emerging nation's foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta said today.

Kupang – A top military officer here said East Timorese refugees in East Nusa Tenggara province no longer feel they have leaders. The sentiment now prevailed among the refugees because those claiming to be their leaders had never paid attention to their fate, Chief of Udayana regional military command Major General Willem da Costa said.

Karen Polglaze, Melbourne – The interests of the people of East Timor would have been totally compromised had former Labor prime minister Paul Keating stayed in the top job, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Nigel Wilson – Government-level talks in East Timor next week are seen as the last chance of early development of vast Timor Sea gas reserves.

Joanna Jolly, Dili – Thousands of East Timorese gathered at the Santa Cruz cemetery on Monday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of a brutal massacre by Indonesian troops that shocked the world and paved the way for the territory's independence.

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – Ten years after the massacre that shocked the world, memories are still raw in East Timor. When a short piece of theatre re-enacting the November 12, 1991, slaughter of more than 200 students in the Santa Cruz cemetery was shown to an audience of survivors and families on Saturday, it left them in tears.

Atambua – A man lobbed a Korean-made grenade into the middle of a crowded East Timorese refugee camp in Manumutin village, Atambua, early Sunday but the device failed to explode, a local police spokesman said.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – As of January 2002, the government will no longer provide any financial or food assistance to East Timorese refugees in West Timor as it will reinstate the Indonesian citizenship of those who choose to stay in Indonesia.

Robert Garran – Indonesian troops attacking the East Timorese town of Balibo in October 1975 had good reason not to want five Australian-based journalists to escape, according to a new book.

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – The news that Japan has authorised its troops to serve overseas, despite the country's pacifist constitution, sends shudders down the spine of Marta Pereira, an aged East Timorese woman who lives on the outskirts of Dili.

Jakarta – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday that it has helped repatriate 188,646 East Timorese refugees from Indonesia's West Timor in the past two years.

Jakarta – Chief of the Udayana Military Command overseeing Bali, East and West Nusa Tenggara, Maj. Gen. Willem T. da Costa, said on Tuesday that he supported former rebel leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao as a possible president of neighboring Timor Lorosae (East Timor).

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – In line with the planned establishment of an independent East Timor early next year, Indonesia and East Timor have agreed to demilitarize their border areas to allow their people to visit one another freely.

United Nations – The Security Council decided Wednesday that the UN-administered territory of East Timor should become independent on May 20 next year.

Hong Kong – East Timor's future president Xanana Gusmao has recalled his fury when Australia refused to accept temporarily a handful of East Timorese students fleeing persecution in Indonesia.

Setiyardi, Timor Lorosae – Floating hotels are a symbol of high living, an irony in stark contrast to widespread poverty in Timor Lorosae.

Disparity between the lifestyles of UNTAET personnel and the people of Timor Lorosae is sowing the seeds of social envy.

More than 3,200 East Timorese refugees returned home from Indonesia during October, the UN High Commission for Refugees said Monday in Dili, underlining it was the biggest one-month influx since March of last year.

UNHCR official Iain Hall told Lusa there were signs the repatriation process could increase significantly by year4s end.

Jakarta – The Indonesian government has decided to halt humanitarian assitance to East Timorese refugees in West Timor at the end of the year, a senior minister said in remarks published Sunday.

Presenter: The commemoration of East Timor's newly-gained independence has been scheduled for 20 May [2002], however, the chief minister of the provisional government, Mari Alkatiri, said the UN is still needed in the territory. In an interview with RDP [state radio], Mari Alkatiri reiterated that he is not predicting general elections to take place in the immediate future.

Virginia Marsh – If all had gone to plan, divers would now be laying a pipeline along the seabed linking Darwin to the substantial gasfields off its shores and a decades-old dream would be close to becoming reality.

Evelyn Leopold, United Nations – East Timor's newly elected constituent assembly asked the United Nations on Monday to grant it independence next May 20, paving the way for a reduction of UN military and civilian forces.

Dili – Indonesia-East Timor trade relations have good prospects in future so that there is glimmer of hope that certain parts of their common borderline will eventually be opened for across-the-border trade activities, an Indonesian representative official said.

Dili – Indonesia's currency, the rupiah, especially of the Rp 5000 to Rp 50000 denomination, is still legally accepted as a means of exchange in Timor Lorosae, along with the US dollar.

Yemris Fointuna, Atambua – At least 800 East Timorese refugees, formerly grouped under the Mahidi militia group from Ainaro regency, returned to their homeland on Wednesday and received a special welcome from East Timorese leaders.

Over 500 refugees crossed the border this morning in the second day of mass refugee returns from camps in Indonesian West Timor.

Jakarta – East Timor's foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta has supported the US-led air attacks on Afghanistan, saying his people have personal experience of the "scourge of terrorism."

Ramani de Silva, Dili – The Constituent Assembly elected in September had been in place for less than two weeks when on September 26 a demonstration of around 300 people demanded that its deliberations be opened to the people through public hearings.

Slobodan Lekic, Dili – When the Indonesian army helicopter suddenly appeared above a rebel camp hidden in East Timor's towering mountains, Agostinho Sidabatur didn't hesitate. The sentry raised his century-old, bolt-action Mauser rifle, aimed at the Bell Huey clattering overhead and squeezed off a single round.

Dili – In its first concrete step toward drafting a new constitution, East Timor's national assembly Wednesday set up four commissions tasked with preparing sections of the national charter.

The assembly has until mid-December to pass the nascent nation's first constitution so that it can be in place before the UN-administered territory achieves independence next year.

Simon Montlake, Jakarta – More than two years after Indonesia's bloody revenge on East Timor for a pro-independence vote, hopes of justice for thousands of victims are fading fast.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – Along with government aid for the 290,000 East Timorese remaining in Indonesia being discontinued at the end of December, the refugee status for people now living in West Timor will also be canceled.

Julie Chao, Dili – After Salvador Ferrera cast his ballot two years ago for independence for East Timor, he fled into the hills. When he came back a few weeks later, his hometown of Suai had been burned to the ground by militia groups. "All of Suai was totally destroyed," he said. "Three priests were killed. Until today, we don't know where their bones are."

Fabiola Desy Unidjaya, Jakarta – Former deputy Army chief of staff Gen. Johny Lumintang denied on Friday any responsibility over systematic human rights violations in East Timor in 1999 after it voted for independence from Indonesia.

The Indonesian Government has shown new signs of its determination to rid itself of East Timorese refugees, and thousands of them are now likely to be forced back across the border within the next three months.

The United Nations and the nascent government of East Timor have long wanted the estimated 50,000 to 80,000 refugees still in camps in West Timor to return.

Dili-East Timor's newly elected Constituent Assembly today unanimously adopted a set of Rules and Procedures for the 88-member body following a two-week debate.