Dili – Thousands of East Timorese refugees poured across the border to their homes Monday after talks among UN agencies, the Indonesian military and pro-Indonesian militia, the United Nations said here.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement that more than 8,000 East Timorese refugees had been able to return over the past three days, and more than 3,000 on Monday.

"Successful discussions have led to the reopening early this morning of the border between the Ambeno [Oekussi] enclave and West Timor," the International Force in East Timor (Interfet) said in a separate statement issued here.

"The first refugees started crossing the border again at 10.30am today. By noon more than 1,300 refugees had made their way across at [border points] Babometo and Wini."

The enclave border had been blocked by the militias since Friday, apparently in a dispute over the detention of a relative of a militia leader by Interfet troops.

The UNHCR statement, issued in Geneva, said the returns brought to more than 64,000 the number of returnees since early October when the repatriation program began. Some 2,000 of those had walked over the border by foot to the town of Suai on Monday, a UNHCR spokesman told AFP by phone.

Almost a quarter of a million East Timorese fled or were pushed into Indonesian-ruled West Timor when military-backed pro-Jakarta militia went on a murderous rampage to avenge the August 30 independence vote there,

But the UNHCR statement cautioned that the problems facing refugees in West Timor were not over, saying that the militias were continuing to "frustrate" efforts to repatriate some 7,000 people from the Noelbaki camp outside the city of Kupang.

Only 16 people had been able to leave Noelbaki, the statement said, adding that there were reports of the milita "tracking down" 80 refugees who had put their names down to return to East Timor.

On Sunday an AFP reporter in Oekussi was told that militia kidnapped two returning refugees when they tried to cross back into the enclave, which is surrounded on all sides by Indonesian-ruled West Timor. The UNHCR statement said the two had been released after being detained for 24 hours.

Earlier Monday Interfet spokesman Colonel Mark Kelly had said the local militia commander in the Babometo area, whom he identified only by one name, Moko, had "taken it upon himself to close the border."

Kelly said there had been good cooperation until Friday with the Indonesian military in the area, but that over the weekend the militia appeared to have "influenced" the military.