Lewa Pardomuan, Dili – Nine warships of a multinational UN peace force sailed for East Timor on Saturday and the force commander was expected to hold talks with the Indonesian military in the shattered territory on Sunday.

Joanna Jolly in Darwin and Irwan Firdaus of Associated Press in Baucau – As international troops prepare to go into East Timor, fearful refugees are coming down from the mountains in the territory and returning to homes still smouldering and in ruins.

Lisbon – Indonesian soldiers and militiamen are laying mines in Dili, the capital of East Timor, as they stream out of the province ahead of the arrival of a multinational peace force, a resistance leader told Portuguese radio Friday.

Philip Cornford – An assistant to East Timor's spiritual leader, Bishop Carlos Belo, claimed yesterday that he saw the Indonesian intelligence official Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin direct the separation of boys and men from refugees forced from Bishop Belo's home 11 days ago.

Sydney – Pro-Jakarta militia are harassing East Timorese refugees throughout the eastern islands of Indonesia, an Australian aid agency said Thursday.

Janet Hunt, executive director of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA), said the situation was dangerous in Flores, Lombok and Bali – a popular holiday spot.

Strasbourg – Deputies at the European parliament on Thursday passed a resolution demanding that the European Union (EU) and its member states recognise an independent East Timor.

Bernard Lagan, Darwin – Two suspected East Timorese militia members and a suspected Indonesian soldier are being held by Australian authorities after infiltrating the UN compound in Dili and being flown by the RAAF with 1400 refugees to Darwin.

Dennis Schulz and Louise Williams – Pro-Indonesian militias are fleeing East Timor ahead of the arrival of peacekeepers, some saying they fear they will now be killed by Indonesian troops to wipe out evidence of Jakarta's leading role in the carnage.

Jakarta – The deputy commander of East Timor's pro-Indonesia militia has warned that the militia will put eight of the territory's 13 districts off limits to multinational troops, a report said Thursday.

Anne-Marie Evans, Macau – Rui Lopes could count former president Suharto's son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto, and General Gleny in Jakarta among his closest friends.

They have been fighting and working together since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Since 1985, Mr Lopes, 47, had also been working for Xanana Gusmao's resistance guerillas.

Anne-Marie Evans, Macau – The political cleansing of East Timor was planned as early as February, one of the militia leaders present at a meeting which hatched the deadly plot has revealed.

Hong Kong – The Indonesian foreign ministry organized and paid for leaders of the pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor to be trained in public relations ahead of the recent election, the Far Eastern Economic Review said Wednesday.

Compere: Which brings us to the war crimes issue more generally. And fresh evidence is emerging of the Indonesian military's complicity in the crimes against humanity in East Timor. The Senate Committee on East Timor heard first-hand accounts today of TNI links with the militias that rampaged through the country before and after the referendum. Karon Snowdon reports:

Macau – A former pro-Jakarta militiaman has claimed that Indonesian forces eliminated more than 2,000 East Timorese by dumping them in waters off the East Timor coast.

One of the few journalists remaining in East Timor is Allan Nairn, Who writes for The Nation. We caught up with him in Dili today and asked him about the reaction there to news of an international peacekeeping mission.

The UN forces in East Timor at first are likely to be involved more in fighting terrorism than keeping the peace, argues Hugh Smith.

Doug Lorimer – The Democratic Socialist Party has called on supporters of democracy in Australia to mobilise to demand that the UN and/or the Australian government immediately send troops to East Timor to help the East Timorese people resist and defeat the Indonesian occupying army's genocidal campaign to physically extinguish the East Timorese people's struggle for liberation from

[Dita Sari, the workers leader who was released from prison in July this year after serving three years of a five-year sentence, is now in the UK at the invitation of the TUC. She gave this interview to Tapol before departing for Brighton yesterday.]

Q. What was the impact in Indonesia of the result of the referendum in East Timor?

Jakarta – Indonesia's armed forces (TNI) appears to have organised the mass bloodshed that hit East Timor, after it voted overwhelmingly for independence, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said yesterday.

Indonesian soldiers used rape as a secret weapon, but their "orphans: bear silent witness. Louise Williams and Leonie Lamont report.

Sister Maria leaned forward and quietly confided the truth about the Catholic orphanage which lies along the lonely northern coastal road of East Timor: "Most of the children are mixed race, the babies of women raped by Indonesian soldiers."

Darwin – An East Timorese support group claimed here Monday to have received reports that tens of thousands of people had died in a deliberate genocidal campaign by Indonesia.

Doug Struck, Kupang – A human rights organisation has documented atrocities in East Timor that implicate the Indonesian military and militias in at least seven mass killings and dozens of individual slayings.

By Michelle Grattan, Hamish McDonald, Bernard Lagan and Peter Cole-Adams.

Indonesia buckled last night and invited a United Nations peacekeeping force "from friendly nations" to enter East Timor.

Max Stahl, Dare – This once peaceful hill station overlooking Dili was turned into a death site at the weekend as Indonesian forces surrounded and fired on terrified refugees living rough in nearby plantations. Dare, once a popular resort for Portuguese colonists escaping the heat of the coastal capital six miles away, is today a scene of misery and terror.

Kupang – A terror campaign by pro-Indonesian militia that started in East Timor has moved across the border to West Timor, where more than 100,000 refugees have fled, fearful sources said.

People, who have visited the border town of Atambua, described it as a lawless place of gunfire, murder and kidnapping.

Darwin – Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militiamen were Sunday attacking thousands of refugees massed in the East Timorese town of Dare, a spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) said here.

A. Lin Neumann, Bangkok – When machete-wielding thugs set upon journalists in East Timor after the territory's August 30 vote for independence, it looked like another gruesome case of the press caught between warring sides. Deplorable, yes, but it comes with the territory if you choose to cover the front lines in conflict zones.

John Pilger – It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass.

Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of petrified trees which appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.

Richard Lloyd Parry – It is a very long drive up the palm-lined, four-lane avenue to the monolithic headquarters of the Indonesia military just outside Jakarta, and the tension in our car is rising.

Kupang, West Timor – The Reverend Dewanto was the first to die, said Sister Mary Barudero. The militiamen had lined up outside the old wooden church filled with refugees in the East Timorese town of Suai on Monday afternoon, and the young Indonesian priest stepped out dressed in his clerical robes to meet the trouble.

Vorasit Satienlerk, Dili – A UN Security Council team toured the ruined capital of East Timor on Saturday as the world community drew up plans for a security force to restore peace to the bloodied territory.

Barry Porter, Auckland – Resistance leader and Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos Horta said yesterday he had received reports that pro-Jakarta forces had begun attacking East Timor hillsides where unarmed civilians had taken refuge.

Most of the East Timorese killed in the violence that has swept the capital, Dili, were left to die where they fell on the street, a French doctor who treated hundreds of wounded in a city clinic said yesterday.

The Medecins du Monde doctor, who fled the territory on Wednesday, said he had treated 200 wounded, including 30 children, in the past five weeks.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – Indonesia's Alliance of Independent Journalists has issued an "urgent action" statement listing several Indonesian journalists missing in East Timor, as concerns grow about the difficulty of finding out what is happening in the territory.

Craig Skehan Kupang and Greg Roberts Brisbane – Aid and church groups are concerned that thousands of East Timorese refugees in camps in West Timor could be used as bargaining chips in Indonesia's stand-off with the international community.

Brendan Nicholson, Canberra – The United Nations and Australia encouraged the Timorese to vote even though intelligence services had warned that the Indonesian military was orchestrating a violent campaign to hold on to the territory.

John Aglionby, Kupang – When Ano Loy saw five Indonesian soldiers walking towards his home in Dili on Monday he was sure they were going to kill him. "They were carrying guns and cans of petrol. All the houses around mine were already empty, so they could only have been coming to me."

Lindsay Murdoch Dili and Craig Skehan Kupang – Piles of bodies have been seen stacked in cells at the police headquarters in Dili, while East Timorese forced to flee into Indonesian West Timor have arrived with accounts of murder and continuing intimidation by Indonesian militias.

Lindsay Murdoch who arrived in Darwin from Dili – The destruction of the capital is greater than anybody could imagine. Hundreds of houses are blackened shells. The doors of government offices are ajar. Banks, cafes, hotels, boarding houses, service stations: all burnt or trashed.

When Sister Margaret arrived in Kupang yesterday after a 30- minute flight from East Timor's capital Dili, she suddenly realised how lucky she was to be a nun. "I was able to go off with the other sisters and priests to the bishop's house. I was not herded into a truck like an animal and driven off to a camp. We managed to retain some dignity."

Kupang – The mayor of the East Timorese capital Dili warned Wednesday that the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) had to leave the territory or the killing and destruction there would continue.

Louise Williams – Catholic Church leaders were hiding in remote East Timor mountains last night after pro-Jakarta militia gangs went on a rampage of bloody retribution, murdering at least 14 priests and nuns and stabbing the Bishop of Baucau.

Patrick Mcdowell, Jakarta – Drunk on stolen beer, pro-Indonesian militiamen looted the UN compound in East Timor on Friday, smashing equipment and terrifying East Timorese still inside after most of the UN staff were evacuated.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Pat Burgess wipes away the tears. He doesn't want to make the life-or-death decision. The Australian political officer working for the United Nations has just been told that staff and their dependants, including Timorese, are evacuating from the besieged UN compound in Dili.

Sydney – Indonesian military were rounding up East Timorese on the main Indonesian island of Java, one of Australia's leading pro-Timor activists said Thursday.

Jakarta – Antiforeigner sentiments marked a series of demonstrations which took place across the capital on Wednesday.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – The looting never stops. It's brazen now: soldiers, police and militia are stealing whatever they can carry.

Compere: Rafael Epstein has also been speaking to Inga Lemp, who was based in Baukau for the past month. She's been telling Rafael Epstein of conversations that she followed on a radio scanner.

Darwin – An American UN worker recovering in an Australian hospital after being wounded in East Timor said Wednesday that he was shot by an Indonesian soldier.

Earl Candler was airlifted to the northern Australian city of Darwin after being shot twice in the abdomen while driving in an unmarked UN vehicle through the town of Liquica four days ago.

Jakarta – Enforcing a state of emergency in East Timor will not improve the situation because the military is unlikely to be neutral, said a former military commander in the province.