Dili – UN blue berets and volunteers on Friday opened voter registration for the landmark poll on the future of East Timor, but the start was marred by the after effects of a violent militia attack.

The attack, and in places the intimidating presence of the anti-independence militia, failed however to deter registrants whose vote next month could determine whether the territory remains a part of Indonesia or goes alone as an independent state.

Old and young lined up in their hundreds clutching identity papers to register at schools throughout the troubled territory, journalists and observers said.

David Wimhurst, the spokesman for the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), said the anti-independence Mahidi militia on Thursday had attacked a village in the district of Suai, 110 kilometers southwest of Dili.

He said the attack prevented four registration posts there from opening on Friday, the first day of the 20-day voter registration period.

But it was the only reported incident of violence in the troubled former Portuguese colony, and the remaining 196 registration stations, most of them in school buildings, worked uninterrupted through the day.

Wimhurst described the Mahidi attack on the village of Salesa as "regrettable." He said that villagers had repulsed the attackers, killing one of the militiamen and wounding another, while suffering four wounded themselves.

"This has caused tension in the area ... and a suspension of registration in four registration centers," he said. "Apart from that I haven't heard of any other problems," Wimhurst said, adding that he expected "the first day or two will be slow and then it will pick up speed."

But in the district of Liquisa, where militia painted skull and cross bones on the windows of a poll station, so many turned up that they had to be told to come back later.

At a school in Bairo Pite in eastern Dili, a 52-year-old man at the end of a long line, holding an old Portuguese civil service "Arquivo de Identificao" (identity card), said he didn't mind waiting. "We struggled for 24 years, we can wait ... No problem," he said.

Asked why he was voting, the man replied: "Because we need to, it's very important. I spent three years in an Indonesian jail ... if it is autonomy, it would be better to be dead."

At the same time, militia members in Dili were busy stringing up banners reading "Autonomy dead or alive," along with bunting in the national red-and-white colours, to celebrate Saturday's anniversary of the 1976 integration of East Timor into Indonesia.

The registrants received stamped voter registration cards slipped into protective plastic folders and were listed in the UNAMET voter roll.

In Jakarta, where East Timorese voted at a UN building, a troupe of artists with orchids staged a peace demonstration in favor of the vote as Indonesian President B.J. Habibie said he would visit East Timor if the vote was in favor of integration. If not, he would give a speech accepting the result, he said.