Jakarta – East Timor's top UN official warned Tuesday that it would take months to resolve the refugee crisis in the troubled nation, where an estimated 10 percent of the population remain in camps.

Atul Khare, the UN secretary-general's special representative to East Timor, said that the issues keeping refugees at makeshift camps, mostly in convents and monasteries in the mostly Roman Catholic nation, were complex.

"I do see IDPs (internally displaced people) continuing to remain a challenge for the new government, the new parliament and the new president to deal with, well into the next year," he told a press briefing in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

East Timor's one million people vote in parliamentary elections on Saturday.

"It is not a short-term fix, it is a medium or longish-to-medium term challenge that we are facing," he said.

The refugee issue related not only to security, but also unemployment, complex land and property laws and the loss of an estimated 2,500 homes destroyed in last year's unrest, he said.

East Timor's government and the UN planned to launch another consolidated appeal to help the refugees some time next month, he added.

No formal registration has yet taken place, Khare said, but the UN believed around 100,000 people were staying in the camps, though some make short trips home or stay only in the camps at night. Of these, about 20,000 were in Dili and the remainder were in the districts, he said, adding that a registration process was expected to soon get underway.

The refugees fled their homes in the aftermath of street violence last year that left about 37 people dead. The unrest was triggered by the government's sacking of some 600 soldiers who had deserted the army complaining of discrimination, and degenerated into factional streetfights among the security forces and gangs.