Jakarta – Some 2,250 East Timorese living elsewhere in Indonesia are expected to register for August's vote on the territory's future, an independent East Timorese youth group said here Friday.

The group, the East Timor Student and Youth Direct Ballot Monitoring Forum, said in a statement that it had made a survey of potential voters living in five areas of Java island and five other provinces.

Its announcement here came as the United Nations, which is organizing the self-determination vote, opened the 20-day voter registration period in the former Portuguese colony.

The UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) has said it expects between 300,000 and 400,000 East Timorese to register for the vote inside the troubled territory including some 60,000 internally displaced persons.

But it said it had no figure for the number expected to register simultaneously at registration stations outside East Timor, save to say they were in their "thousands."

In Indonesia at large the UN has set up five registration posts for East Timorese, many of them students, in the cities of Jakarta, Ujung Pandang, Denpasar, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

Overseas posts have also been opened in New York, Geneva, five cities in Australia, Macau (a Portuguese enclave near Hong Kong), Lisbon and Maputo in Mozambique to cater for the thousands of East Timorese who have fled the territory since Indonesia invaded in 1975.

The students' forum coordinator, Alexandre Gusmao, said the group had been accredited by UNAMET to observe the registration process outside the territory. Michael Kennedy, of the External Voting Program of East Timor, told AFP the group was "in the process of being accredited if not already."

Gusmao, a student from the Driyakarya Theological Institute here, also called on his fellow East Timorese to exercise their rights without any fear of intimidation or pressure. He said the group had received no reports of intimidation from the East Timorese community in Jakarta.

The opening of the registration period was ordered by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York Wednesday, despite continuing security fears.

Annan said he had received assurances from the Indonesian authorities, who are responsible for security, that full efforts would be made to curb violence by pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor.

The militia have been blamed by UNAMET in the past months for bloody attacks on pro-independence groups, and more recently for serious harassment of UN personnel in East Timor.

Annan, who has already postponed the ballot from August 8, has said the registration could be halted mid-way if the militia violence is not brought under control.

In the actual ballot, now scheduled for August 21-22 if security permits, East Timorese will be asked whether or not they accept an offer of broad autonomy from Indonesia, which annexed the territory in 1976. Indonesia has said it may grant independence to East Timor if the autonomy offer is rejected.