Hamish Mcdonald – Even before the UN Assistance Mission to East Timor (UNAMET) is fully deployed, diplomats and political leaders of concerned countries are discussing the option of postponing the autonomy-or-independence vote scheduled for August 8.

"The logical next step is to start talking about postponing," agreed one senior diplomat, after condemning what he saw as "an awful lot of chicanery behind the scenes" in Jakarta about support for the pro-Indonesian militias.

But the diplomat thinks postponment can only be a matter of weeks at most. The problem is that mainstream Indonesian politics imposes its own tight deadline on the East Timor vote.

In August, the new Indonesian Parliament (DPR) will have taken shape following the June 7 elections. It will form the core of the new People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) which will select a new president and vice-president in November.

The president, Dr B.J. Habibie, who made the dramatic policy switch in January which conceded the independence option for Timor, is given only an outside chance of retaining the leadership. He may even be dumped as presidential candidate by the divided Golkar party. Dr Habibie already faces obvious resistance by the Indonesian military to his Timor policy.

After June 7, Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri's party, PDI-Struggle, will be one of the main players in government formation. It has formed a loose coalition with two other new parties, but also has lines out to the military (which has 38 seats in the new 500-seat DPR) and has expressed unhappiness at letting Timor go. The President's pledges would start losing their currency immediately if the election makes him a lame duck, and would pass their sell-by date by November.

"If consultation [the Timor ballot] slips too far into August, you get the new MPR session and all bets are off," the diplomat said. The tight timetable therefore adds to the pressure on the UN to bring the Indonesian army and police into line with Jakarta's pledges to the world body. Security will be the top priority for UNAMET.

Because we are closest to the scene, Australian police and officials will probably be first on the ground in large numbers, calling on their Indonesian counterparts to crack down on the trigger-happy, truculent militias.