Pat Walsh – On 20 March, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon agreed to a Department of Foreign Affairs request to block public access to 34-year-old cables on the famine that ravaged East Timor early in the Indonesian occupation.

Tim Anderson – East Timorese PM Xanana Gusmao looks likely to lose government to Fretilin in June. Gusmao's mixed legacy proves that a great resistance leader does not necessarily make a great nation builder, writes Tim Anderson.

Damien Kingsbury – Jose Ramos-Horta's decision to support the Democratic Party (PD) in the parliamentary elections has two sets of implications for Timor-Leste's politics. The first and most obvious will be the effect that this has on the outcome of the parliamentary elections and in particular the level of success of PD.

The first-round vote of East Timor's presidential election went smoothly, defying low expectations based on the tiny country's violent history.

Anna Powles, Dili – The second round run-off of Timor Leste's presidential elections scheduled for mid-April will pit two heavyweights of the decade-old country's past resistance struggle and signals a shift towards a new era of nationalist politics.

Michael Bachelard – Less than a week after Jose Ramos-Horta lost his bid for another term as president of East Timor he has decided to throw his weight behind the country's third party, the Democrats, for the June parliamentary election.

Zubaidah Nazeer – In many ways, the re-election bid of East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta was doomed even before he threw his hat into the ring.

Matt Peacock – Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has blocked the release of cables about East Timor, despite the fact they are up to 37 years old.

Ms Roxon decided to keep the documents secret on the grounds that opening them up would prejudice Australia's security.

Dili – East Timor's parliament has suspended the country's justice minister after a court summoned her to face charges of corruption and abuse of power. The suspension comes amid a presidential election in which some candidates have accused the government of rampant graft.

Commentator Joao Saldanha from the Timor Institute of Development in Dili has started the Republican party to run in East Timor's parliamentary elections in June.

Presenter: Sen Lam

Speaker: Dr Joao Saldanha, commentator from the Timor Institute of Development, Dili

Dili, East Timor – President Jose Ramos Horta, who campaigned tirelessly for East Timor's independence for more than two decades and then went on to help steer the new nation, conceded defeat on Monday after a poor showing in weekend elections.

Aubrey Belford – East Timor's people are desperately poor but its government is swimming in cash. Is the country buying its way out of poverty, or into economic disaster?

Canberra, Australia – Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith says parliamentary elections planned in East Timor could allow international troops to begin withdrawing after six years of restoring stability to the fledgling Southeast Asian nation.

Damien Kingsbury – East Timor incumbent president, Jose Ramos-Horta, has failed in his bid for re-election, with his former key rival, Fretilin's Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres, and former armed forces commander Taur Matan Ruak, who is supported by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, going through to the second electoral round.

Brendan Brady – When residents of Dili voted to elect a new president five years ago, more than a hundred thousand displaced people were scattered about the city in tent camps and gangs of disgruntled youths exorcised their angst in the street. The scene this year reflected a very different mood.

Timor-Leste Friendship Network (AusTimorFN) in conjunction with Deakin University's Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights (CCDHR)

Jose Ramos-Horta has lost his attempt to win a second term in office, with preliminary results from East Timor's presidential race showing he has failed to win enough support to feature in a second-round run-off election.

Anwar Faruqi – Early results from East Timor's presidential polls on Sunday showed the opposition Fretilin party's Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres had surged ahead with incumbent Jose Ramos-Horta lagging in third.

Tito Belo, Dili – East Timor kicked off a peaceful presidential election on Saturday, a critical test to whether Asia's youngest and poorest country can maintain stability and build confidence to develop the economy.

Anwar Faruqi – East Timor voted Saturday in the country's second presidential election as a free nation, seen as a key test for a young democracy taking charge of its own security as UN forces prepare to leave.

Dili, East Timor – More than 1,200 UN forces are ready to intervene in East Timor's presidential election this weekend if there is an outbreak of major violence, the top UN official in the country said on Friday.

Karlis Salna – East Timor's incumbent president, Jose Ramos-Horta, remains nonchalant even though this weekend could mark the beginning of the end for his career as one of the country's most respected and renowned political figures.

David McKittrick – At the funeral of Francisco Xavier do Amaral the president of East Timor paid handsome tribute to the man he described as "a symbol of unity in our aspiration to independence and freedom, a courageous nationalist with faith in democracy."

Anna Powles, Dili – Timorese voters will go to the polls twice this year to elect the nation's president and parliament for the third time since achieving independence in 2001. The elections, scheduled respectively for March and June, promise to be the most significant to date for Timor Leste, also known as East Timor.

Michael Bachelard, Dili – When East Timorese voters go to the polls on Saturday to choose their new president, every candidate with a chance of victory will be a veteran of the struggle against Indonesia.

Michael Bachelard – East Timor is a long way from realising its dreams of prosperity despite its oil revenue.

Timor Plaza's bleached interiors, glass-sided elevators and fluorescent lights mark it out as the cousin of every shopping mall in almost every city in the world.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – A number of foreigners, mostly wives of diplomats, have been reportedly flowing out of East Timor due to safety concerns ahead of the March 17 presidential election, Indonesian ambassador to Dili, Eddy Setiabudhi, said on Thursday.

Michael Bachelard – East Timor's presidential election race is heating up, with the Fretilin candidate Francisco "Lu Olo" Guterres accusing one of his main rivals of being a "cat's paw" of the government.

Concerns have been raised about possible intimidation of voters in a number of electoral districts in East Timor by members of the military loyal to their former chief and presidential hopeful Taur Matan Ruak.

Damien Kingsbury – (Unknown) 1937-6 March, 2012. East Timor's first president, for just 9 days ahead of Indonesia's invasion in 1975, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, has died in Dili at the age of 74 of complications caused by advanced cancer.

Damien Kingsbury – (Unknown) 1937-6 March, 2012. East Timor's first president, for just 9 days ahead of Indonesia's invasion in 1975, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, has died in Dili at the age of 74 of complications caused by advanced cancer.

East Timor's incumbent president Jose Ramos-Horta says he remains firm in the view that Australian and United Nations troops stationed in his country must withdraw before the end of the year.

East Timor's first and shortest-serving president Francisco Xavier do Amaral died on Tuesday after a long battle with cancer, a presidential spokesman said.

Karlis Salna – Former guerilla commander Francisco "Lu-Olo" Guterres has warned ahead of East Timor's upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections that the young country must resist returning to the violence of its recent past.

Lindsay Murdoch – They were East Timor's stolen generation. Between 1975 and 1999, about 4000 young and vulnerable Timorese were secretly taken to Indonesia, where some of them were forced to work in slave-like conditions while others were educated and grew up with the families of soldiers, an Australian academic has found.

Michael Leach – Timor-Leste goes to the polls again on 17 March to elect a new president for a five-year term.

While the president's role is largely symbolic, and government is formed at the parliamentary elections in June, the election is important in several respects.

Ted McDonnell – President Jose Ramos-Horta's bid for reelection in East Timor suffered a blow Thursday when a key political party said it would back his opponent.

The UN Security Council has decided to extend its peacekeeping mission in East Timor until the end of 2012 but to gradually phase it out after that.

The mission has about 1000 police and military advisers, most of them from Australia and New Zealand, who were deployed in 2006 to help the government in Dili maintain order and security.

East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta said Wednesday that many Timorese will waste their vote in a presidential election next month if they back one of the explosion of small parties in contention.

Karlis Salna – Police in East Timor are on high alert after two offices connected to the administration of upcoming elections were hit with firebombs.

The attack, at about 3am (5am AEDT) on Monday in the capital Dili, comes just weeks out from presidential elections which will be held on March 17.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith and East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao have discussed Australia's future security role as East Timor moves towards elections and an end to the United Nations mission.

Hamish McDonald – As Australians recalled the Japanese bombing of Darwin 70 years ago yesterday, the leader of a small neighbouring country was reminding us gently that this was but a sideshow to the catastrophe that hit his people a day later.

In this open letter The Judicial System Monitoring Programme (JSMP), KontraS (the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence), and Amnesty International write to urge the Security Council to take immediate and effective steps to address the continuing impunity for crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations which occurred in Timor-Leste (then East Timor)

Australia's invasion of East Timor (yes, really) [1] in December 1941, is widely assumed to have been made in order to expel Japanese forces from the territory. In fact Japan had no forces in Portuguese Timor, as Australian policymakers knew at the time.

During Indonesia's 25-year occupation of East Timor, about 4-thousand children were transferred to Indonesia to live with adoptive parents. Some were taken by soldiers and others were sent by government and religious organisations.

Damien Kingsbury – As Timor-Leste heads into the three rounds of 2012 elections, election observers have begun to organise to monitor the election process and to report their findings.

Accredited by Timor-Leste's National Electoral Commission (CNE), observers continue to play a critical role in the young country's still developing democratic process.

Damien Kingsbury – The various contenders for Timor-Leste's presidency in the 17 March election have begun to try to persuade the voting public why they should be elected as president. A number of candidates have said that, if elected, they will institute particular changes or reforms. These promises appear, however, to misunderstand the role of Timor-Leste's president.

The UN Security Council will renew UNMIT's mandate following discussions on Timor-Leste on 22 and 23 February in New York. To inform their debate, La'o Hamutuk has written the following letter to the Council, which can also be downloaded from http://www.laohamutuk.org/reports/UN/LHtoUNSC15Feb2012En.pdf.

Bangkok – The Southeast Asian half-island nation of Timor-Leste is falling short on most Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), experts warn.

"The areas that remain challenging or off-track compared to the 2015 targets include poverty, underweight children, maternal mortality and sanitation," Felix Piedade, the national adviser of Timor Leste's MDG Secretariat, told IRIN.

Jim Della-Giacoma – Early in 2010, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was sitting in Kabul with some diplomats who had served in Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

"Is it true", he asked, "that Indonesia just walked away from East Timor after 1999?" "Absolutely", they replied.