Dili – The struggle between East Timor's government and influential Roman Catholic Church intensified Monday with the church hierarchy accusing Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's cabinet of being secret Marxists who endanger democracy.

In a "pastoral note", the church hierarchy said it defended "true democracy" and the separation of church and state, while denouncing what it termed was the government's "quick conversion from Marxism".

It charged the government was following policies of "Marxist democracies of the Chinese model or of the retrograde Third World", referring to the ruling FRETILIN party's ideological stance of nearly three decades ago.

The Catholic Church's lastest blast against Dili's cabinet follows two months of mounting tensions that has seen the government accuse the church of making "bellicose declarations" and "unwanted interference" in politics.

The angry public exchanges first erupted over government plans to introduce a pilot program to demote religion classes in public schools to the status of an optional subject.

More recently the church has also strongly criticized the government for its decision to allow a bilateral Truth and Friendship Commission with Jakarta to deal with the sensitive issue of justice for Timorese victims of Indonesian atrocities committed around the time of the country's 1999 independence plebiscite. In an interview with Lusa Sunday, the church's spokesman, Rev.

Domingos Soares, said Dili's polices in the two areas endangered East Timor's fledgling democracy and cultural identity.

"What is happening is that justice is in danger. Democracy is in danger. Timorese culture is in danger. Timorese identity is in danger", Rev. Soares said, adding that the church's stance was one of "defending democracy".