Tim Dodd, Dili – In Dili's old commercial heart is an Javanese bakso (meatball soup) restaurant that does a thriving trade at $US1 a bowl, proving the East Timorese have not lost their taste for the food of the oppressors.

They pack the small establishment, which is next door to a burnt-out building – a testimony to the city's destruction at the hands of the Indonesians 2 years ago.

Dili has many other reminders of Jakarta's 24-year rule, including an abundance of Indonesian signs. One, on the main road from the airport, urges the populace to heed the "eight functions of the family", a leftover from the Soeharto regime which, like autocratic governments everywhere, took a didactic approach to social control.

Nor can the Indonesian influence on culture be easily erased, even among a people who chose independence by a margin of nearly 4 to 1. Dungdut, Indonesia's most popular musical style, blares everywhere in East Timor. "This is the music I like," says John, a Dili taxi driver, turning up the volume as the repetitive rhythms, derived from Indian music, fill the radio.

These seeming contradictions are woven through the complex relationship between Indonesia and its former vassal, which becomes an independent nation exactly one month from today.

Indonesia's senior envoy here, Kristio Wahyono, voices the official line, saying: "Our foreign policy towards East Timor is to be good neighbours and forward looking."

But Mr Kristio still does not know whether President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was invited months ago, will come to the independence celebrations. East Timor's leaders have said it is vital she comes, to set the tone for future relations, and the Indonesian envoy agrees. "From my point of view she should come," he says. But he notes that she has to take into account the "strong opposition from the [Indonesian] military and the Parliament" to a trip to Dili.

Mr Kristio sees the same division of opinion on the East Timorese side. "We see [president-elect] Xanana as a friend of Indonesia," he says. But he believes that Fretilin, the majority party in the Parliament, is anti-Jakarta: "They are opposed to Indonesia and are still hostile towards Indonesia."

However, the two countries will not able to look past each other. For Indonesia there are some commercial benefits – not large ones but enough to help sustain a good relationship.

The Indonesian state-owned oil company, Pertamina, is operating very successfully in East Timor, with a 68 per cent share of the fuel market. Indonesia is also the best access corridor to East Timor from nearly everywhere except Australia.