UN transition administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello went to East Timor's border with Indonesia Wednesday to welcome a group of returning refugees, marking the repatriation of 200,000 people.

"The country lives in an atmosphere of stability and peace", Vieira de Mello told a group of about 100 returning through the border post of Motaain, urging them to vote in Sunday4s presidential election.

"You are welcome, not only because you return, but because you return at a very opportune moment", he told them, adding that after Sunday's vote "only one stage will remain – May 20, the country's independence".

The Brazilian diplomat, who has overseen East Timor's transition to independence since the 1999 plebiscite, encouraged the group, mostly women and children, to return to their villages and towns and send word back to relatives and friends in Indonesia that life was peaceful.

He said he hoped most of the estimated 50,000 refugees remaining in Indonesian West Timor would return before independence.

While Vieira de Mello4s visit to Motaain was billed as welcoming home refugee No. 200,000, officials said that total was actually reached two days ago.

The refugees, roughly one-third of East Timor's population, either fled or were forced into exile by anti-independence violence unleashed by Indonesian security forces and militias before and after the Aug. 30, 1999, plebiscite.