Mark Dodd on the Patricia Anne Hotung – As dawn broke yesterday scores of refugees scrambled up to the deck of this former Australian Navy survey ship for their first glimpse of Dili since the violence of September 1999 in East Timor.

Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta – Australia's senior diplomat in Jakarta, Mr John McCarthy, has accused Indonesia's former military chief, General Wiranto, of having "broad knowledge" of the violence and destruction in East Timor last year.

Mark Dodd, Dili – Indonesian military officials actively directed and organised last year's murderous political violence in East Timor, according to new evidence uncovered by a United Nations official investigating war crimes in the soon to be independent territory.

Jakarta – Deadlocks are looming between Indonesia and the United Nations, as a UN Security Council mission reports to headquarters on Monday on the situation in camps in West Timor holding tens of thousand of East Timorese refugees.

Dili – Women's groups and rape investigators say the victims of militia rape and sex slavery continue to bear the scars of post-ballot violence in East Timor, facing ostracism on their return home.

Mark Dodd, Dili – The United Nations has entered talks with senior militia leaders implicated in some of the worst crimes in East Timor last year, but whose return may lead to the repatriation of thousands of refugees.

Catharine Munro Balibo, East Timor – Forensic investigators are looking for the remains of five Western journalists murdered here 25 years ago during Indonesia's occupation of East Timor.

Tim Dodd, Jakarta – Indonesia will put on trial 22 military and police officers, government officials and militia members accused of human rights violations in East Timor, the Indonesian Attorney-General, Mr Marzuki Darusman, said yesterday.

Joanna Jolly, Atambua – A secret meeting between senior East Timorese militia leaders, United Nations political staff and East Timorese political and military leaders could result in the return home of thousands of East Timorese refugees from camps in Indonesian West Timor.

Mark Dodd, Atambua – Ringed with fading yellow police tape, the smashed office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is an eerie deserted shell – a house of death.

Jon Land – On November 5, the Channel 9 Sunday program screened a special report titled "On Patrol in Timor", which claimed to show "how moderate militia factions are politically battling hardline groups still ready to attack the UN peacekeepers". The report, however, muddied many facts and issues surrounding the militia.

Jim Mcilroy, Dili – Street stallholders selling food and drinks on the seafront near the centre of the city here faced an attempt to forcibly evict them from their established positions on November 3, as the United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET) moved to "clean up" the waterfront area, as part of a plan to make Dili a place attractive to tourists and the

Merrilyn Treasure, Sydney – Having won liberation after 25 years of struggle, the East Timorese people's first challenge is to defend their right to freedom, East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao told 500 people at a "Peace and Justice in East Timor" public meeting here on November 9. Gusmao was delivering the 2000 Sydney Peace Prize lecture.

Mark Dodd, Suai – United Nations police in this shattered town had been forced to free people who had confessed to rape and murder because of a lack of resources to pursue investigations, a senior UN official told a visiting Security Council mission yesterday.

Bronwyn Curran, Dili – UN Security Council envoys wrapped up a two-day mission to East Timor Tuesday, concluding that it was ready for independence but in dire need of international support.

Dili – Thousands of East Timorese, clutching flowers and photos, followed independence leader Xanana Gusmao in a procession through Dili's still-rubbled streets yesterday, in the largest ever commemoration of a massacre in the city's Santa Cruz cemetery nine years ago.

Dili – Indonesian soldiers helped 85 East Timorese refugees cross the border back into their homeland under heavy rain Saturday, a United Nations refugee official said.

Mark Todd, Dili – Indonesia says a large number of East Timor refugees will be repatriated soon from squalid militia-controlled camps in West Timor, but the timing of the announcement comes days before a visit to the violence-prone border region by a high-level mission from the United Nations Security Council.

Jakarta – Notorious Eurico Guterres, former commander of pro-Indonesia Aitarak East Timorese militia, has been awarded a "red-and-white award" by the State Defense Movement for his struggle to defend Indonesian rule in East Timor.

Sydney – Indonesian authorities conspired with East Timorese militiamen to permit the systematic rape of women and the keeping of sex slaves, the Australian wife of independence leader Xanana Gusmao said Thursday.

[In these two articles we look at the problems of building a new East Timor, where many locals feel the United Nations is leaving them out of decisions on their future, and where past violence casts a long shadow on the next generation]

Jon Land – Companies operating in the oil and natural gas rich Timor Gap include some of the largest multinational and Australian-based energy corporations.

Associated Press in Dili – For the first time since East Timor broke free from Indonesian occupation last year, wage earners in the territory will have to pay income tax, according to a draft law introduced on Tuesday.

Kerry-Anne Walsh, Canberra – An investigation has been launched into allegations that Australian soldiers on duty in East Timor brutalised and tortured captured pro-Indonesian militia members.

East Timorese solidarity activists in Australia have condemned federal government attempts to maintain control of large parts of East Timor's oil-rich seabeds, accusing it of being "still greedy for blood money".

Jakarta – Former East Timorese militia boss Eurico Guterres on Thursday accused Indonesia's attorney general of endangering his life by threatening to expel him to his former homeland.

Vaudine England – Four East Timorese militia leaders have sent a second letter to the United Nations, the Pope and governments pleading for international protection and accusing their colleagues in the Pro-Integration Armed Forces (PPI) of threatening their lives.

New Zealand soldiers killed a third militiaman yesterday during a close-range gun battle in East Timor and shot at another in a separate skirmish. No New Zealand soldiers were injured in the fights, which took place three hours apart about 6km northeast of Suai, near the West Timor border.

Jon Land – While little has been revealed about the discussions during the first formal round of negotiations between the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and Australia on the future of the Timor Gap Treaty, the Australian government has made its position clear: it does not think that the terms of the treaty should change significantly (if at all) an

In August 1975, as the Suharto dictatorship was preparing to invade East Timor, Australia's ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, sent a cable to Canberra urging compliance with Indonesia's plans to annex East Timor.

Lindsay Murdoch, Semarang – Nersia Emaculada De Nercio sits on the edge of a bed in the dormitory of an orphanage she shares with dozens of other children in central Java. She clutches the tattered photographs that are now the only link she has with her family, somewhere hundreds of kilometres away in the squalid refugee camps of West Timor.

Vaudine England, Surabaya – The first talks in months between East Timorese independence leaders and West Timor-based anti-independence groups took place in Surabaya yesterday to discuss ways to reconcile the former combatants. The informal meeting took almost two days to arrange but, once it happened, it looked like a family reunion.

Tony Parkinson – Australia's role in the emancipation of East Timor was an ill-considered "frolic" that could easily have led to military humiliation, former governor-general Bill Hayden said last night.

Vaudine England, Surabaya – A court yesterday ordered the release of East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres, who was originally arrested without a warrant and was seeking police protection because of actions issued against him overseas.

Jakarta – Human Rights Watch called Tuesday on Indonesia to stop registering East Timorese refugees for repatriation or resettlement, saying there were no safeguards for them to chose freely whether they wanted to go home or not.

Michael Perry, Sydney – Pro-Jakarta militia in Indonesian West Timor have abandoned hit and run attacks on East Timor and begun infiltrating deeper into the territory, the United Nation's senior official in East Timor said on Monday.

Joanna Jolly, Kupang and Vaudine England, Jakarta – Militia leaders fear betrayal in the ranks and suspect the Indonesian military will use other senior militiamen against them.

Jakarta – Dozens of East Timorese militia members rallied at The Habibie Center on Jl. Kemang Selatan, South Jakarta, on Friday, demanding that its founder B.J. Habibie, who is also a former president, take responsibility for last year's ballot in the former province which led to its independence.

Joanna Jolly, Kupang – East Timorese militia leaders in West Timor say they will meet all conditions set down by the United Nations, including facing justice, in order to return home.

John McBeth, Jakarta – Lenders are likely to have harsh words for Indonesia when they meet in Tokyo on October 17-18, if a promise to disarm and dismantle pro-Indonesian militias in West Timor isn't kept. The signs are not good. It has been five weeks since militia members hacked to death three United Nations workers in the border town of Atambua.

Joanna Jolly, Kupang – Former Indonesian president Bacharuddin Habibie vowed to cleanse East Timor of "everything but ants" if it voted for independence, militia leaders claim.

The East Timorese militia holed up in West Timor say they are ready to release evidence implicating Mr Habibie and his generals in the destruction of East Timor in return for political asylum.

Jakarta – An East Timorese militia leader claimed yesterday his life was in danger because he had threatened to expose details of the Indonesian army's involvement in last year's destruction of the territory.

Jakarta – Scepticism ran high in the Indonesian capital on Thursday at a reported claim by East Timorese ex-militiamen that former president BJ Habibie had personally ordered the violence in East Timor last year.

Jakarta – The last governor of East Timor Abilio Jose Osorio Soares said on Tuesday that he preferred an international tribunal to try human rights violations which occurred after the referendum in the former Indonesian territory, saying it was fairer that the country's judicial system.

Lindsay Murdoch, Jayapura – Pro-independence leaders and militia in West Papua vowed yesterday to defy a government order to pull down the separatist Morning Star flag by tomorrow, setting the stage for more violence in the Indonesian province.

Andrew Perrin – Adriano Almeida da Carmo owns the most popular restaurant in the mountain town of Ainaro, in central west East Timor. There is little to recommend it. Chair legs slip through the cracks of the homemade bamboo floor where customers perch precariously, the food is poor, the beer is warm, and, when night falls, the restaurant is plunged into pitch black.

Jakarta – Four former leaders of pro-Indonesia militias who helped run a campaign of wholesale murder and looting in East Timor last year have offered to reveal everything they know in exchange for guarantees of safety.

Prosecutors in Indonesia have admitted that six of the 22 suspects wanted for questioning in connection with human rights abuses in East Timor last year have gone missing.

A spokesman for the attorney-general's office said they included some of the most notorious pro-Jakarta militia leaders accused of carrying out atrocities during the independence referendum last August.

Hamish Mcdonald, Dili – A quarter century ago, just about the time most readers will open this newspaper at home or on the way to work, five young television newsmen from Sydney and Melbourne were shot and stabbed to death while trying to surrender to Indonesian soldiers at the village of Balibo west of here.

United Nations – Indonesia rejected Nobel Peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta's call for an international war crimes tribunal for East Timor, saying it wants to bring those responsible for last year's deadly rampage to justice and does not need outside help.