Dili – The candidates for next week's East Timor presidential election should publicly commit to addressing the country's human rights problems and propose reforms, a rights group said Wednesday.

"Institutional weaknesses in the police, military and judiciary have fuelled the current crisis in Timor-Leste," Human Rights Watch researcher Charmain Mohamed said.

"Timor's next president should immediately address these weaknesses so that the country can meet its international human rights obligations," she said.

Violence has pulsed through impoverished East Timor since its people voted for independence from neighbouring Indonesia in 1999 after 24 years of occupation.

At least 37 people were killed and 150,000 forced to flee during unrest last year which led to the dispatch of an Australian-led international peacekeeping force to stabilise the former Portuguese colony.

"Long-term stability for Timor-Leste depends on transparent and credible prosecutions of perpetrators of last year's violence," said Mohamed.

Human Rights Watch also called on the candidates to address "the ongoing impunity for gross human rights violations perpetrated during the Indonesian occupation."

The April 9 election will be the first since East Timor formally won independence in 2002. Eight candidates are vying for the presidency, a largely ceremonial post, amid tightened security over concerns that the poll could be a trigger for more violence.

The fledgling state's current prime minister, Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, is thought one of the favourites to win, along with Fransisco Guterres from Fretilin, East Timor's largest political party.