Associated Press, Waimori – The international peacekeeping force is being too cautious in dealing with the remnants of the militias which ravaged East Timor, the commander of the pro-independence guerillas said yesterday. The Australian-led force was also moving too slowly to get vital aid deliveries to people in the countryside, said Taur Matan Ruak, speaking at his remote base in the hills of central East Timor.

"This could have been done much more quickly," Ruak told a United Nations official, Gilbert Greenall. He offered his own troops as unarmed security escorts for food convoys.

Rauk is the senior commander of Falintil, the armed wing of the resistance movement that opposed Indonesia's occupation of East Timor after the Portuguese relinquished its colony in 1975.

Mr Greenall acknowledged UN agencies "have been slower than we might have been" in getting the aid to people displaced in the aftermath of the August 30 referendum on independence. He said there were plans to pick up the pace of aid delivery this week.

The peace force is mandated to disarm all the militias, including Falintil, except in their own designated bases.

Ruak said the remaining militia in East Timor posed little threat. "They are on the run themselves," he said, and the peace force could be more aggressive in its deployment.

If the peacekeepers needed reinforcement to escort food convoys, his men were ready to volunteer, even without their weapons. "The militia are no match for us, even if we are disarmed," he said. They were effective only as long as they had the regular Indonesian army behind them, he said.

Residents of Cairu, where a convoy of trucks made an aid delivery yesterday, said Falintil fighters drove off militia raiders two weeks ago, killing one of them. Five Falintil were wounded in the gunbattle. Cairu is one of the few villages seen in East Timor to have escaped serious damage.