Robert Garran – Australian troops, police and civilians are likely to be sent to East Timor early next year as the backbone of a UN peacekeeping force up to 2000-strong.

Sources told The Australian last night that the Australians would help the East Timorese rebuild the territory's civil and law and order infrastructure if, as expected, they opt for independence from Indonesia.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer foreshadowed the deployment yesterday, saying that if East Timor chose independence, Australia would provide police, under UN command, to work alongside East Timorese police.

It is understood the Government expects to play the lead role in organising and possibly commanding a UN-administered force that would move into East Timor as the Indonesians withdrew.

Government sources said roughly half the UN force, which might comprise up to 2000 personnel from Australia and other countries, would be civilians.

"Events have moved with breathtaking speed in the past few months. But they have not passed us by," Mr Downer said in a speech last night to the Australia-Asia Institute.

"There will almost certainly have to be some international confidence-building and administrative presence in East Timor from an early stage.

"At this stage, we do not favour a UN peacekeeping force of the kind involved in Cambodia."

Mr Downer also said Department of Foreign Affairs records, covering Indonesia's incorporation of East Timor between 1974 and 1976, would be released.

Australia believed military personnel would be needed in the UN force to collect and verify the decommissioning of weapons, but would not take a role keeping warring factions apart, sources said.

Police, including some from the Australian Federal Police, would help train a new police force, with the aim of building confidence by bringing some impartiality into dealings between pro-independence Fretilin supporters and pro-Jakarta elements.

Civilians would help establish a transitional government and assist in running hospitals, schools, transport, the customs system, revenue raising and setting up a central bank and new currency.

The timing and make-up of the UN peacekeeping force will depend on how quickly Indonesia pulls out. Indonesia insists on handing East Timor back to Portugal, which is expected to place it immediately under UN administration that could last six months to a year, sources say.

Mr Downer said in his speech last night the most difficult hurdle for the East Timorese over the coming months would be managing security in the territory.

Mr Downer said Indonesia would only make security and administrative resources available if the cost was borne by the UN.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton said Mr Downer's approach "completely fails to come to grips with the deteriorating situation on the ground".

Mr Downer's decision to release East Timor documents was a "shabby partisan exercise" because it did not go beyond 1976, Mr Brereton said.

The Government should also include documents that clarified the extent of the Fraser Government's knowledge of the widespread atrocities early in Indonesia's occupation.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Denis Burke warned yesterday that Northern Australia might face another wave of boat people if Indonesia went ahead with threats to abandon East Timor.