Dili – About 19,000 East Timorese refugees have returned home in the first five months of this year, the UN said Friday.

Melbourne – Following are key facts about the Timor Gap treaty, oil and gas developments in the Timor Sea and Australia's need for a new gas supply.

Treaty

I Wayan Juniartha, Tuban, Bali – A senior official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said here on Wednesday that returning East Timorese children – currently

Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, charging opposition legislators were hobbling action by East Timor's government, warned Thursday he might use his broad Fretilin party majority to rush thr

Kupang – The Indonesian military has detained an East Timorese soldier for illegally entering the Indonesian territory of West Timor to seek his family, a local military commander said

East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao said Thursday that he was opposed to any Timorese receiving compensation or war reparations for violence commited during the Indonesian occupation a

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Jakarta – Survivors of a bloody 1999 attack on East Timorese independence supporters told Indonesia's human rights court Thursday how they fled or feigned death to e

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta – Two former top security officers in charge of East Timor testified at the ad hoc East Timor human rights trial on Wednesday, insisting that the task o

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – The central government has relented a little in its approach toward East Timorese refugees by postponing the planned closure of refugee camps in East Nusa Teng

Irwan Firdaus, Jakarta – Sitting silently in a packed courtroom, two current and one former Indonesian official listened Wednesday as prosecutors accused them of allowing a mob to kill

[The Dutch Government claims it has secured an agreement from Indonesia that it will continue to investigate the murder of a Dutch journalist in East Timor, almost three years ago.

[The nation of East Timor is barely a month old, yet already the issue of separation of church and state has reared its ugly head – in the person of Bishop Carlos Belo.

Craig Skehan – East Timor has made a claim for all of the $30 billion Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea as part of a bid to pressure Australia into sensitive negotiations on ma

Dili – Three Indonesian ministers made a three hour visit to East Timor on Saturday, in an effort to enhance bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

East Timor considers the creation of the International Criminal Court a priority and will soon sign the UN convention establishing the tribunal, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said M

Sydney – Australia and East Timor pledged to continue their close friendship Monday during East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao's first official visit abroad since his country became i

[The Timor Sea Agreement between Dili and Canberra, is due to be ratified by the East Timorese parliament soon.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – East Timorese leaders acceded on Friday to demands by former prointegration militia commander Joao da Silva Tavares and thousands of his followers, paving the

[East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has made clear for the first time that former militia leaders returning from exile in West Timor will not be granted amnesty for their role in t

Canberra – Militiamen responsible for violence when East Timor voted for independence could not expect reconciliation without first facing justice, President Xanana Gusmao said on his f

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Jakarta – Indonesia and East Timor have identified a number of residual problems that they will attempt to resolve following the new country's independence which

Dili – Thirty-one officials from Indonesia met East Timorese leaders yesterday to push its former province to compensate Jakarta for assets left behind when it pulled out amid bloodshed

Kupang – Senior Indonesian government officials on Saturday expressed willingness to allow East Timorese policemen and officials to pursue higher education in Indonesia.

Clare Black, Oslo – East Timor, a brand new nation barely one month old, hopes that the rebirth of its legendary gourmet coffee will bring some much-needed income to its people who are

[Deliverance: The Inside Story of East Timor's Fight for Freedom. By Don Greenlees and Robert Garran, Allen & Unwin, 375pp, $35.]

Don Greenlees, Jakarta – Indonesia is sending a delegation of three ministers to East Timor in a signal that it wants a co-operative relationship with its former possession, declared in

Oslo – East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said on Friday the doors of his newly-independent country were open to pro-Jakarta militia members, now living in exile in Indones

Jill Jolliffe – An incursion by Indonesian warships into East Timorese waters last month was a ploy by military hardliners to prevent President Megawati Sukarnoputri attending independe

Sanur – The Indonesian government is expected to complete the repatriation process of 10,000 families of refugees back to East Timor by August this year, in a bid to resolve thecomplex

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has put the new country's politicians on notice to lift their performance, in a free-wheeling attack on the Government just 23

Jakarta – Indonesian prosecutors dropped their investigation into the killing of a Dutch journalist in East Timor that took place in 1999, a spokesman said Thursday.

Jakarta – Indonesia paid for anti-independence militias responsible for much of the violence in East Timor in 1999 when it voted for independence, a former government official told a co

[There are fears that violence could once again return to East Timor, after the announcement by former militia leader Joao Tavares that he intends to return home with some 3,000 foll

Jakarta – Witnesses testified before the human rights ad hoc trial for the 1999 East Timor atrocities on Tuesday that pro-Jakarta militia groups attacked proindependence supporters taki

A former district chief in East Timor during Indonesian rule said that provincial authorities had often paid the pro-Jakarta militias who launched an orgy of violence against independen

Canberra – The federal government was examining introducing duty-free status for all goods of East Timor origin, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.

[Australians keen to help in the reconstruction of East Timor are being asked to make a financial commitment.

Dear Fellow Citizens,

The former chief of East Timorese pro-Jakarta militia groups is planning to return home from exile in Indonesia with some 3,000 followers, a report said.

Don Greenlees – Soon after midnight on May 20, after the East Timorese flag had been raised, and the new nation declared independent, Indonesia's armed forces commander Admiral Widodo A

Jakarta – A former Indonesian district army chief admitted on Thursday that a man alleged to have led a bloody attack on a church in East Timor in April 1999 was a soldier.

Greg Sheridan – Want to hear something strange?

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – The Central Jakarta District Court rejected on Tuesday the request by a group of East Timorese refugees demanding former president BJ Habibie to pay R

Aaron Goodman, Dili (Inter Press Service) – Augostino da Costa Cabral's eyes were wide open, and his smile seemed unbreakable.

Jakarta – A former school teacher told an Indonesian human rights court on Wednesday that he helped load the bodies of murdered priests, women and children from the East Timor township

Vaudine England, Jakarta – Paramilitary leader Eurico Guterres, notorious for his leadership of the East Timorese Aitarak, or Thorn militia, has been charged with crimes against humanit

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – The Indonesian Military (TNI) Headquarters has yet to consider transferring the headquarters of the Udayana Regional Military Command from Denpasar, Bali, to t

Ian Munro – Premier Steve Bracks has asked Prime Minister John Howard not to force 1700 asylum seekers to return to East Timor.

Max Lane – A major theme of the ceremony that took place in Dili on May 20 to proclaim the independence of East Timor was that the three-year period of United Nations transitional admin

Ian Timberlake, Dili – An official has revealed new details about counterinsurgency operations two years ago that killed several pro-Indonesia militiamen and crippled their efforts to d