Melbourne – The East Timorese people were prepared to accept the risk of armed struggle against Indonesia and now accept the high cost of their freedom, resistance leader Xanana Gusmao said Monday.

Gusmao also told reporters here that he hoped to return to East Timor from Australia as soon as possible to set up an interim administration to work with the United Nations during the transition to full independence.

"We know that we have a very, very difficult future," he said. "We know that we will start from zero to reconstruct not only our contry but also ourselves as people, as human beings."

Speaking in halting English but carefully choosing his words, the man who spent seven years in Indonesian prisons before his release last month, said the East Timorese resistance movement had always known there would be violence following the August 30 ballot.

But it had never anticipated how destructive and devastating it would be. "Before the ballot I believed that my people would very easily forget and forgive everything in the past, but the last weeks caused a very big trauma in my people," he said.

"It is why the year of 2000 will be a very very difficult time, a very very difficult attempt to heal everything, not only the basic infrastructure but essentially the spirit of our people, now traumatised by the destruction and by the violence.

"We are aware of a very, very difficult task ... We are aware of our destiny, our fate of being a poor, small, defenceless people." But he added: "We feel every reason to defend our freedom, a right to live as a human being, as a people."

Asked if the cost of East Timorese freedom and independence was too high in terms of death and destruction, he said the East Timorese had accepted the risk and now accepted the cost.

"We accepted the risk at the beginning of our struggle, known that we fought alone against the indifference of the international community, against economic interests, against everybody."

Gusmao will deliver a major speech later Monday to an audience expected to top 10,000, including the vast majority of the estimated 8,000 East Timorese exiles living here. He is also being given a reception at the Victorian state parliament and a welcome at the town hall.