Jakarta – Protests erupted here Wednesday as the UN approved sending troops to East Timor, with security forces opening fire outside the UN building at students protesting Indonesian military atrocities.

Susan Sim, Jakarta – Indonesia's powerful defence forces (TNI) chief General Wiranto will likely step down next month to prepare for his presidential campaign as a parliamentary investigation into a banking scandal looks certain to implicate close friends of Dr B.J. Habibie and kill off his chances.

Hong Kong – The Indonesian foreign ministry organized and paid for leaders of the pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor to be trained in public relations ahead of the recent election, the Far Eastern Economic Review said Wednesday.

London – British ministers were under fire Wednesday after it emerged that millions of pounds of public money had been used to help Indonesia buy jets and secure industrial contracts, newspapers reported.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – On the same day that an independent commission to investigate military abuses was visiting Aceh for the first time, seven leading political parties announced proposals for "special autonomy" for the rich, violence-wracked province.

The UN forces in East Timor at first are likely to be involved more in fighting terrorism than keeping the peace, argues Hugh Smith.

One of the few journalists remaining in East Timor is Allan Nairn, Who writes for The Nation. We caught up with him in Dili today and asked him about the reaction there to news of an international peacekeeping mission.

Compere: Which brings us to the war crimes issue more generally. And fresh evidence is emerging of the Indonesian military's complicity in the crimes against humanity in East Timor. The Senate Committee on East Timor heard first-hand accounts today of TNI links with the militias that rampaged through the country before and after the referendum. Karon Snowdon reports:

Macau – A former pro-Jakarta militiaman has claimed that Indonesian forces eliminated more than 2,000 East Timorese by dumping them in waters off the East Timor coast.

Doug Lorimer – The Democratic Socialist Party has called on supporters of democracy in Australia to mobilise to demand that the UN and/or the Australian government immediately send troops to East Timor to help the East Timorese people resist and defeat the Indonesian occupying army's genocidal campaign to physically extinguish the East Timorese people's struggle for liberation from

Jakarta – Indonesia's armed forces (TNI) appears to have organised the mass bloodshed that hit East Timor, after it voted overwhelmingly for independence, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said yesterday.

Derwin Pereira, Jakarta – President B.J. Habibie's decision to allow foreign troops into trouble-torn East Timor sparked an upsurge of nationalist sentiments especially in the government and local media, with many resentful of international pressure on Indonesia.

[Dita Sari, the workers leader who was released from prison in July this year after serving three years of a five-year sentence, is now in the UK at the invitation of the TUC. She gave this interview to Tapol before departing for Brighton yesterday.]

Q. What was the impact in Indonesia of the result of the referendum in East Timor?

Jay Solomon, Jakarta – An investigation into a politically charged banking scandal here has uncovered "numerous" indications of fraud, as well as the transfer of millions of dollars to senior Indonesian officials and politically connected individuals, an audit by the US accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers says.

Doug Struck, Kupang – A human rights organisation has documented atrocities in East Timor that implicate the Indonesian military and militias in at least seven mass killings and dozens of individual slayings.

Darwin – An East Timorese support group claimed here Monday to have received reports that tens of thousands of people had died in a deliberate genocidal campaign by Indonesia.

Max Stahl, Dare – This once peaceful hill station overlooking Dili was turned into a death site at the weekend as Indonesian forces surrounded and fired on terrified refugees living rough in nearby plantations. Dare, once a popular resort for Portuguese colonists escaping the heat of the coastal capital six miles away, is today a scene of misery and terror.

Kupang – A terror campaign by pro-Indonesian militia that started in East Timor has moved across the border to West Timor, where more than 100,000 refugees have fled, fearful sources said.

People, who have visited the border town of Atambua, described it as a lawless place of gunfire, murder and kidnapping.

Indonesian soldiers used rape as a secret weapon, but their "orphans: bear silent witness. Louise Williams and Leonie Lamont report.

Sister Maria leaned forward and quietly confided the truth about the Catholic orphanage which lies along the lonely northern coastal road of East Timor: "Most of the children are mixed race, the babies of women raped by Indonesian soldiers."

By Michelle Grattan, Hamish McDonald, Bernard Lagan and Peter Cole-Adams.

Indonesia buckled last night and invited a United Nations peacekeeping force "from friendly nations" to enter East Timor.

A. Lin Neumann, Bangkok – When machete-wielding thugs set upon journalists in East Timor after the territory's August 30 vote for independence, it looked like another gruesome case of the press caught between warring sides. Deplorable, yes, but it comes with the territory if you choose to cover the front lines in conflict zones.

Ordinary Australians took to the streets in their thousands today demanding urgent government action over the slaughter in East Timor.

Protesters stormed Prime Minister John Howard's Sydney office, blockaded airline terminals and maintained vigils as nation-wide anger continued to mount over the genocide in the violence-wracked region.

Jakarta – After a week of chaos and terror in East Timor, Indonesia's powerful military boss sang "Feelings" on Sunday to show why he can't walk away from the independence-minded province.

Darwin – Indonesian troops and pro-Jakarta militiamen were Sunday attacking thousands of refugees massed in the East Timorese town of Dare, a spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) said here.

John Pilger – It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass.

Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of petrified trees which appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.

Lindsay Murdoch Dili and Craig Skehan Kupang – Piles of bodies have been seen stacked in cells at the police headquarters in Dili, while East Timorese forced to flee into Indonesian West Timor have arrived with accounts of murder and continuing intimidation by Indonesian militias.

Jakarta – The rising wave of nationalistic fever brought on by a fervor of anti-American and Australian sentiment continued on Friday as major Indonesian cities became witnesses to flag burning demonstrations.

Peter Cole-Adams and Mark Metherell – The Federal Government yesterday cancelled three joint Australia-Indonesia training exercises and announced a review of all aspects of the defence relationship.

In another day of nationwide demonstrations more than 25,000 protesters packed the centre of Melbourne yesterday to hear East Timor independence leader Xanana Gusmao appeal to his Australian "brothers and sisters" to pressure the Howard Government to send peace enforcers into East Timor.

Lindsay Murdoch who arrived in Darwin from Dili – The destruction of the capital is greater than anybody could imagine. Hundreds of houses are blackened shells. The doors of government offices are ajar. Banks, cafes, hotels, boarding houses, service stations: all burnt or trashed.

Richard Lloyd Parry – It is a very long drive up the palm-lined, four-lane avenue to the monolithic headquarters of the Indonesia military just outside Jakarta, and the tension in our car is rising.

John Aglionby, Kupang – When Ano Loy saw five Indonesian soldiers walking towards his home in Dili on Monday he was sure they were going to kill him. "They were carrying guns and cans of petrol. All the houses around mine were already empty, so they could only have been coming to me."

Brendan Nicholson, Canberra – The United Nations and Australia encouraged the Timorese to vote even though intelligence services had warned that the Indonesian military was orchestrating a violent campaign to hold on to the territory.

Craig Skehan Kupang and Greg Roberts Brisbane – Aid and church groups are concerned that thousands of East Timorese refugees in camps in West Timor could be used as bargaining chips in Indonesia's stand-off with the international community.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – Indonesia's Alliance of Independent Journalists has issued an "urgent action" statement listing several Indonesian journalists missing in East Timor, as concerns grow about the difficulty of finding out what is happening in the territory.

Most of the East Timorese killed in the violence that has swept the capital, Dili, were left to die where they fell on the street, a French doctor who treated hundreds of wounded in a city clinic said yesterday.

The Medecins du Monde doctor, who fled the territory on Wednesday, said he had treated 200 wounded, including 30 children, in the past five weeks.

Barry Porter, Auckland – Resistance leader and Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos Horta said yesterday he had received reports that pro-Jakarta forces had begun attacking East Timor hillsides where unarmed civilians had taken refuge.

Vorasit Satienlerk, Dili – A UN Security Council team toured the ruined capital of East Timor on Saturday as the world community drew up plans for a security force to restore peace to the bloodied territory.

Kupang, West Timor – The Reverend Dewanto was the first to die, said Sister Mary Barudero. The militiamen had lined up outside the old wooden church filled with refugees in the East Timorese town of Suai on Monday afternoon, and the young Indonesian priest stepped out dressed in his clerical robes to meet the trouble.

The men in uniform usually get their own way, David Jenkins writes from Jakarta. Indonesia's military leaders are accustomed to getting their own way. And when it looked yesterday as if President Habibie might be tempted to give the green light to the early arrival of foreign peacekeepers in East Timor the generals decided enough was enough.

Louise Williams – Catholic Church leaders were hiding in remote East Timor mountains last night after pro-Jakarta militia gangs went on a rampage of bloody retribution, murdering at least 14 priests and nuns and stabbing the Bishop of Baucau.

Martin Woollacott – When the Seaforth Highlanders set off for Jakarta docks in November, 1946, after months of coping with the Indonesian liberation movement on behalf of the absent Dutch, they passed contingents of troops just in from Holland. With one accord, the British soldiers raised clenched fists and shouted "Merdeka!" ("Freedom!").

Washington – The International Monetary Fund has suspended discussions with Indonesia on its economic program, a fund spokesman said Friday.

"IMF management continues to keep under close review ongoing developments in Indonesia and discussions for the next program review are on hold," said the IMF spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

When Sister Margaret arrived in Kupang yesterday after a 30- minute flight from East Timor's capital Dili, she suddenly realised how lucky she was to be a nun. "I was able to go off with the other sisters and priests to the bishop's house. I was not herded into a truck like an animal and driven off to a camp. We managed to retain some dignity."

Patrick Mcdowell, Jakarta – Drunk on stolen beer, pro-Indonesian militiamen looted the UN compound in East Timor on Friday, smashing equipment and terrifying East Timorese still inside after most of the UN staff were evacuated.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Pat Burgess wipes away the tears. He doesn't want to make the life-or-death decision. The Australian political officer working for the United Nations has just been told that staff and their dependants, including Timorese, are evacuating from the besieged UN compound in Dili.

Kupang – The mayor of the East Timorese capital Dili warned Wednesday that the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) had to leave the territory or the killing and destruction there would continue.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – The looting never stops. It's brazen now: soldiers, police and militia are stealing whatever they can carry.

Jakarta – Antiforeigner sentiments marked a series of demonstrations which took place across the capital on Wednesday.

John McBeth and Margot Cohen, Jakarta – On a late-August evening, senior officials of Golkar, Indonesia's ruling party, filed out into the dark after a five-hour conclave at the home of President B.J. Habibie. The official word was that the beleaguered and embattled party now stood united. In truth, its members were deeply split.