Karlis Salna – With just over a year to elections in East Timor, it appears almost certain the same political players that have dominated its first 10 years as a nation will again be vying for power.

Karlis Salna – The United Nations remains on track to withdraw from East Timor at the end of 2012 but says international partners will need to maintain a significant presence in the country beyond next year's elections.

Brian Padden – The United Nations says that plans to end the East Timor peacekeeping mission in 2012 are on track. The UN took over the functions of the national police in 2006 after riots and factional fighting brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Last week, Connect Asia ran a story about coffee farmers in East Timor, who were shocked to hear the green coffee cheries they sold to middlemen for 30 cents US went on to be sold for 26 dollars or more in places like Australia, often as a fair trade product.

Sara Everingham and staff – The East Timorese prime minister has lashed out at the United Nations mission in East Timor, saying it should leave the country.

Jakarta – The United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNMIT) was on the back foot Friday after Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao angrily accused the world body of trampling on his country's sovereignty.

There's concern that a peace agreement between martial arts groups in East Timor may not hold if political trouble starts during future election campaigns.

Thousands of coffee farmers in East Timor are bracing for a lean harvest, with heavy rains taking their toll.

It was never meant to be seen outside of a UN retreat... but now a very critical assessment of East Timor's national institutions has surfaced, causing anger in the government.

Perhaps most controversially, the UN report said that by the end of 2012, a consolidation of power in the hands of the Prime Minister may undermine the role of the Parliament and rule of law.

Edilberto C. de Jesus – The effects of the violence visited on the East Timor capital of Dili by the fighting among its fragmented communities were still plainly visible during my first trip in February 2007.

Refugee camps greeted travelers emerging from the Dili Airport, checking into the city's landmark Hotel Timor, and attending services at the Catholic cathedral.

The Federal Government has abandoned plans to establish a regional immigration processing centre in East Timor.

The proposal was announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard last year, but ran into difficulties when East Timor's parliament rejected it.

Philip Dorling – China recently tried to establish a spy base in East Timor, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

Fairfax newspapers are reporting news of East Timor rejecting an offer from China to build a surveillance radar facility on its territory fearing it would be used for spying.

An East Timor court has acquitted the country's deputy prime minister of corruption and abuse of power charges after he was accused of securing an overpaid job for his wife.

Prosecutors had charged Jose Luis Guterres with improperly giving his wife, Ana Maria Valerio, a job as counsel to the East Timor ambassador to the United Nations in New York in 2006.

Phillip Coorey & Kirsty Needham – The Gillard government is believed to have given up on establishing a regional processing centre in East Timor and is now focusing on Papua New Guinea.

Megawati Wijaya, Singapore – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will weigh this week in Jakarta whether to bring East Timor, also known as Timor Leste, into the 10-member regional grouping.

Barry Wain – Government officials, analysts and academics continue to debate the merits of admitting Timor Leste this year to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, seemingly unaware that the subject is closed.

John Martinkus – A leaked US diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Lisbon in 2006 details a senior Portuguese intelligence official accusing Australia of fomenting the violence in East Timor that year.

East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao says he is against an Australian proposal to establish a regional refugee centre in his country. "I have never accepted it," he said on the sidelines of a ruling party conference in Dili.

Lindsay Murdoch – Julia Gillard's proposal to build a refugee centre in East Timor has been rejected by the country's President Jose Ramos-Horta, the only senior political figure in the tiny nation who had left the door open to the plan.

George Quinn – Since 2004 about 300 Cuban doctors, nurses and medical technicians have been working quietly but effectively in East Timor.

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta has moved to clarify reports he has rejected an Australian bid for an immigration detention centre in his country.

Fairfax Media reported Dr Ramos-Horta had told journalists in his country that East Timor wouldn't agree to the centre.

Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – East Timor has rejected a claim that its leaders are failing their mainly impoverished people by blocking development of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field, saying the multibillion-dollar project will go ahead.

The nation has also reaffirmed that it will honour the outcome of stalled and bitter negotiations over the field in the Timor Sea.

Joe Cochrane – To many Indonesians, Timor-Leste is a country redolent with bad dreams, the result of the problematic past when it was the country's 27th province and the traumatic birthing process of the new nation. Joe Cochrane returns to the capital, Dili, to find much has changed and that the neighbors to the west are still a part of the story.

Brian Knowlton, Washington – A frank evaluation by the World Bank's internal auditors of a decade of efforts to help East Timor underscores the challenges facing international organizations attempting to assist struggling nations.

Loro Horta – After 400 years of inept Portuguese colonial rule and 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation, Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) gained its independence in 2002 following a UN-sponsored referendum.

Woodside Petroleum Ltd says East Timor's government has ignored requests for talks on the stalled Sunrise development and that competitors had shown interest in buying the $7 billion project.

Lynn Lee – Indonesia is backing Timor Leste's bid to join Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) because excluding it would be "economically unnatural" and "politically destabilising" for the region in the long term, said Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa.

Overview

Zubaidah Nazeer, Dili – Former investment banker Derek Chua traded in his sharp suits for comfortable clothes so that he could cycle to work each morning here in Timor Leste's capital city.

The 33-year-old Singaporean, the finance director of Timor Leste's only general insurance company, first visited the country two years ago.

Karlis Salna – Defence Minister Stephen Smith says a full assessment of a planned withdrawal of Australian troops from East Timor will be made in conjunction with the government in Dili following elections to be held next year.

Clinton Fernandes – In April 2007 I applied to the National Archives of Australia for access to records of the Defence Intelligence Organisation relating to Indonesia and East Timor in 1975.

Karlis Salna – East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta says a plan for a regional processing centre to be built in his country has not been on his agenda for months despite Prime Minister Julia Gillard insisting negotiations have been ongoing.

Karlis Salna – East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta has dismissed suggestions Australian forces should remain in the fledgling nation beyond a planned 2012 withdrawal.

Rowan Callick – Australia should maintain troops in East Timor beyond their planned withdrawal after next year's elections, says the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

The Timor Defence Force would need assistance until 2020, "not least to ensure" it remained focused on defence and not "political activities" and policing, the institute says in a new report.

Adam Gartrell – Australia should maintain a military presence in East Timor as late as 2020, a new report recommends.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says many of the problems that led to Timor's near-collapse in 2006 – and the subsequent Australia-led military intervention – remain potent.

Sara Everingham and staff – East Timor's deputy prime minister has confirmed his country has rejected Australia's proposal to establish a refugee processing centre on Timor's soil.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says he does not accept reports East Timor is not in favour of housing a regional processing centre for asylum seekers.

Matt Brown – More cold water has been poured on plans to establish an asylum seeker processing centre in East Timor, with the UN refugee agency saying the country has not approached it about the idea.

Tom Allard and Kirsty Needham – East Timor has reaffirmed its hostility to a refugee processing centre on its territory, even as the Gillard government insists it will still proceed with negotiations with the fledgling country over a plan labelled an embarrassing farce by the opposition.

Karlis Salna – East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has given his strongest indication yet that he is opposed to the idea of a refugee processing centre being built on his country's soil.

Karlis Salna – Prime Minister Julia Gillard plans to pursue an agreement with East Timor over her proposal for a regional refugee processing centre despite the fledgling nation all but rejecting the idea.

Brian Padden – Indonesia's unreserved support for East Timor's membership to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations reinforces the growing ties between two countries that were on opposite sides of a struggle for independence, a little more than a decade ago. Economic interests, democratic development and geopolitical realities have helped both countries overcome the past.

Damien Kingsbury – The government's East Timor asylum seeker solution is dying a death of a thousand cuts. It is a slow and painful process and unedifying to watch it writhe in agony. The plan has not yet been killed outright, but only an unreconstructed optimist would now suggest its fate is other than sealed.

Tom Allard and Kirsty Needham – East Timor has dismissed Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's proposal for a refugee processing centre on its soil on the eve of a multinational summit on people smuggling.

Karlis Salna – East Timor remains open to discussing Australia's plan for a regional refugee processing centre to be built on its territory but would like to delay the negotiations.

Dylan Welch – The veil of secrecy obscuring what Australia knew about Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor will be pulled back a little, after a successful court challenge against the censorship of secret intelligence briefings.

Jeremy Thompson – Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says an agreement for an offshore immigration centre on East Timor will not be reached at a regional meeting in Bali this week.