East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao said today he would not stand for re-election in his country's second presidential elections, are slated for 2007.

"I am tired. Five years is enough for me," the independence hero and former guerrilla leader told the Portuguese news agency Lusa.

Gusmao won a five-year term in a landslide victory in the country's first presidential election held in April 2002. He secured more than 83 per cent of all votes cast, compared to just 17 per cent for his only challenger, Francisco Xavier do Amaral.

East Timor's Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo said last month he would consider running for president if he had strong popular support for the move and if Gusmao decided not to run again.

Belo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, along with Jose Ramos Horta, a prominent independence activist who is now East Timor's foreign minister, for his non-violent resistance to Indonesia's occupation of his homeland.

A poll carried out last year in East Timor found that more than 80 per cent of the population would like to see Belo run for president.

East Timor spent some 450 years as a neglected Portuguese colony before it was invaded by neighbouring Indonesia in 1975 after Lisbon abruptly withdrew.

The territory of some one million people officially became independent from Indonesia in May 2002 after its people voted overwhelmingly in 1999 to break free from Jakarta.