Hamish Mcdonald, Dili – The Australian commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in East Timor has appealed for the international community to continue to pressure Indonesia to allow the remaining 100,000 displaced people in West Timor to return home.

At the same time, Interfet Commander Major-General Peter Cosgrove revealed he has written to his Indonesian counterpart across the border, detailing specific instances of pro-Indonesian militias harassing refugees preparing to return.

In the same letter, General Cosgrove also complained about the behaviour of the Indonesian Army's district commander in charge of the border region around the enclave of Oecussi.

The latest incident of militia harassment came at the refugee camp in Labur, 50 kilometres south of Atambua in West Timor, on Thursday as the camp's East Timorese were preparing to board a convoy of trucks sent to take them home.

"Militia turned up, and the TNI [Indonesian military] did nothing to prevent the militia from intimidating people. One family made it out," General Cosgrove said yesterday.

The setback came only two days after the Interfet leader held a meeting at the border village of Batugade with the new commander of Indonesia's Udayana military district covering West Timor, Major-General Kiki Syahnakri. East Timorese resistance leader Mr Xanana Gusmao also attended the meeting, which aimed to lay out a path for the return of displaced people and reconciling pro-Indonesian groups.

Speaking of last Thursday's incident, General Cosgrove said: "It's a great frustration, and I think the international community needs to ... keep a focus on the fact that there's 100,000 East Timorese still dispossessed, displaced ...".

General Cosgrove has written to General Syahnakri detailing two instances where the district commander of Kefamenanu, Lieutenant-Colonel Manurung, had shown partisanship with militias and harassed people returning to the Oecussi enclave.

During one incident 10 days ago, Australian troops at the Oecussi border detained a suspected militia leader attempting to return with a group of refugees.

Five minutes later, a militia leader named Amoco Soares arrived at the border post and incited Indonesian Army troops to threaten the Australian troops unless the man was returned. An Australian corporal calmed the tension and the two bodies of troops moved back from their close contact positions.

However, on another recent occasion the Indonesian local commander, Colonel Manurung, told Australian officers in Oecussi that he would stop the return of all displaced people to the enclave unless a detained militia leader, the brother of Amoco Soares, was released. Only about 13,000 of the enclave's population of 52,000 have so far returned.

Despite the incidents, General Cosgrove expressed confidence that the situation would improve with the appointment of General Syahnakri as regional commander. General Syahnakri had been commander in Dili when Indonesian forces were withdrawing from East Timor.

"I put on the record that I was very appreciative of his determination to navigate through a very difficult period when there was a large number of TNI soldiers here, many of whom were East Timorese, and who plainly had great difficulty accepting the election outcome and their own orders to leave East Timor," he said.

"This was a difficult period for all involved, one in which possibility of misadventure was great. And it needed careful monitoring and precautions from TNI leadership, and General Syahnakri came through."