Sydney – The Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, Hilton Deakin, has said that an Indonesian soldier was killed on Christmas Eve after he was found to have been paid to assassinate 1996 Nobel Peace Prize East Timorese Bishop D. Ximenes Belo. Deakin said on Friday that he had received a fax from "reliable Catholic sources" with the details of the murder attempt in December as Belo arrived from a trip to Europe and celebrated a mass in Dilis cathedral attended by thousands of the Bishops supporters. The Australian Bishop said that one soldier had been beaten to death on December 24 after "somebody had heard one of them (soldiers) speaking and saying derogatory things about the bishop and (how) he would get him, and so on." Deakin added that "there was an awful scuffle", a dead body was eventually found inside the cathedral and, by all accounts, the smear of blood on the floor indicated the body had been dragged into the cathedral after the person had been severely wounded". He said also that "hundreds of thousand of rupiahs, equivalent to several thousand Australian dollars" had been found on the body. Deakin said that he had decided to release the fax details because he was concerned with the safety of Belo who has said last month that murder attempts were made on his life in 1989 and 1991. East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 and annexed one year later but the United Nations still regards Portugal as the territory's administering power Lusa/Fim