The head of East Timor's Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, has said that the Dili correspondent of the Portuguese Lusa news agency "should be withdrawn from East Timor" for having written an article on church power in the new country which was "full of insults and lack of education".

In a letter dated May 21 and published in Thursday's edition of the Timor Post newspaper, Bishop Belo said a report filed last Friday by Lusa correspondent Antonio Sampaio was "an article against the Timorese people and the Catholics of Dili". "I must express my total rejection of the article", Belo said in the letter, which was addressed to "the Lusa representative in Dili".

The Bishop's communication, however, was not received by Lusa's Dili bureau. Belo's letter was also sent to priests and congregations in the diocese of Dili, as well as the Timorese authorities. The Bishop, a 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner, also said that "Lusa has only supplied a very bad service to the Timorese nation and its people".