Jakarta – Three hundred East Timorese crossed the border to return home from West Timor yesterday, a week before Jakarta cuts off all assistance to the tens of thousands of refugees still holed-up in camps in West Timor, an official said.

"Around 500 went back on Thursday and some 300 returned from the border areas today," Mr Fernando del Mundo, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in Dili, the capital of East Timor.

He also said that departures of refugees from the camps in Kupang, the main town in West Timor, also continued with around 400 refugees now in the transit centre in Kupang, ready to depart for Dili early next week.

Another 500 people who arrived in Dili by boat from Kupang on Wednesday consisted of 60 East Timorese previously enlisted in the Indonesian army along with their families, he told AFP by telephone.

They have now began to move out from the transit centre in Dili but discussions are continuing for the return home of those bound for Ailieu, 25 kilometres south of Dili. Ailieu was the headquarters of resistance fighters during Indonesian rule and most of the 500 arrivals on Wednesday were from the area.

Between 90,000 and 100,000 remain in the West Timor camps, many run by militia "camp bosses" who fled to the west when Australian-led troops arrived to halt the violence.