Marianne Kearney, Dili – Mr Joao Cancio Freitas might be the director of Dili's Institute of Technology, but like almost three quarters of this city's population, he has spent weeks liv

Kalinga Seneviratne, Sydney – East Timor's new Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta has been warmly welcomed by Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer as a leader who could help solve

John Martinkus – Three weeks ago in East Timor I was given information from senior members of the East Timorese military that confirmed what the now deposed prime minister had been sayi

Damien Kingsbury – The appointment of Jose Ramos Horta as East Timor's interim prime minister is a move towards installing a unifying figure for a small nation that, for a moment, appea

Dili – East Timor's new prime minister Jose Ramos-Horta is the candidate best placed to unify the traumatised nation but the Nobel laureate could still face opposition and challenges li

Tim Anderson – "We did not expect that the elected leader of a party with an overwhelming mandate could be forced to stand down in this way in a democracy." – Fretilin press release, Ju

Jon Lamb – The political crisis in East Timor has deepened following the resignation of East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri on June 26.

Whit Mason – In the past few weeks, two Australian dreams have come crashing to earth. First, there was chaos in East Timor and then the Socceroos' defeat by Italy.

John McBeth – A descendant of Islamic-proselytising Yemeni traders, educated in the then-Marxist-ruled states of Angola and Mozambique, the newly deposed prime minister of Timor Leste M

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – A meeting of East Timor's parliament tomorrow will underline the surreal political world in which the troubled fledgling nation is now existing.

Kenneth Davidson – The chief criticism of John Howard's decision to reinstitute the Pacific Solution to deal with the threat of hundreds of Papuans fleeing military persecution and econ

Michelle Grattan – John Howard put on a late-night party for Australian officials and travelling media who wanted to watch the soccer.

Nick Everett – East Timor's current political crisis began when a group of soldiers from the country's west – which grew from 140 to 591 – signed a petition claiming discrimination insi

Singapore – Petty regional divisions have been stirred up for political gain in East Timor which is still struggling to define its identity after centuries of foreign domination, analys

James Dunn – The reluctant resignation of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri yesterday may have eased the crisis in East Timor, but the situation will remain very unsettled until the underlyi

Mark Colvin: I'm joined now by Damien Kingsbury, Associate Professor at Deakin University's School of International and Political Studies, a close follower of East Timor's politics for

Jonathan Head – It was with a characteristically unemotional performance that Mari Alkatiri announced the end of his – and East Timor's – first prime ministerial term.

After much speculation and rumor, Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Firman Gani was replaced after only 22 months in office, handing over his command to Insp. Gen.

John Martinkus – The East Timorese Prime Minister has added to the murk surrounding the country's descent into violence by accusing opposition groups backed by foreigners of conspiring

Kalinga Seneviratne, Sydney – A two month old rebellion by sacked army officials and police deserters in East Timor, one of the world's newest and poorest countries, has resulted in an

Minh Nguyen – Following a period of relative quiet, the notion of failed or failing states is again making headlines in Australia as its troops struggle to disarm warring gangs in East

With its efforts to combat money laundering becoming increasingly feeble, Indonesia faces the risk of being internationally blacklisted again as a haven for dirty money and a high-risk

Scott Burchill – The Howard Government's decision to subcontract the processing of asylum seekers to Australia's poorest neighbours is more than simply a dereliction of its sovereign re

It is a place where the usual rules do not apply. Inmates can be held indefinitely, their fate decided without recourse to the accepted legal and administrative processes.

Jon Lamb – Political tensions within the East Timorese elite continue to simmer amidst preparation for the first sitting of parliament since the arrival of the Australian-led internatio

Peter Boyle – Among the cynical circles of Australian foreign policy "experts" committed to Australia playing a neo-colonial role in the Asia-Pacific region, there are some differing vi

Decisions about immigration policy must be made independently from concerns about our relationship with Indonesia.

Estevao Cabral and Julie Wark – At a panel on the state of the world's media hosted by Columbia University in New York last April, the veteran journalist Robert Fisk expressed outrage a

Tom Hyland – Listen carefully: that scratching you hear is the scribbling of commentators, furiously re-writing history.

Annemarie Evans – Australian armoured vehicles patrol the streets of East Timor's capital, Dili, amid the burned-out shells of houses and food warehouses looted by marauding gangs, who

It is no secret that public trust toward police has been falling, and the recent threats and the version of terrorism carried out by groups claiming to represent certain ethnicities and

When the former prime minister Paul Keating produced a bilateral security treaty with Indonesia in 1995, his conservative opponents thought he had gone troppo.

Maire Leadbeater – Two Herald contributors, John Roughan and Michael Richardson have now gone into bat for the virtues of a unified Indonesia.

Peter Boyle – Commenting on the Australian troop deployment to East Timor on May 31, the Australian's Paul Kelly said, "this intervention is both military and political.

Jon Lamb – While the fighting between different factions of the East Timor Defence Force (FDTL) and the East Timor National Police (PNTL) has ceased with the arrival of the Australian-l

The unfortunate thing about overseas is that it is full of foreigners, and they have different traditions from us.

Diane Farsetta – Is the Southeast Asian island nation of East Timor a success story or a basket case?

The entire country and the world have once again reacted with solidarity following another natural disaster here, this time the magnitude 5.9 earthquake that devastated Indonesia's dens

Max Lane – On May 24, East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and the speaker of East Timor's parliament Lu'olo sent a letter to the governments of Australia

Maryann Keady – Three years ago, I wrote a piece talking about attempts to oust Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri in East Timor, then a new struggling independent nation.

Television reports of disasters in the country now come with melancholy tunes, most notably the ballads of Ebiet G. Ade.

Lawrence Bartlett, Sydney – The explosion of violence in East Timor was the result of an accumulation of ethnic, economic and historical grievances in the young country and the failure

James Dunn – East Timor's descent into violence and anarchy, and towards civil war, chaos came as a shock, including to this columnist who has been involved in the affairs of this commu

Tom Hyland – The UN, Australia and the East Timorese Government had multiple warnings of the looming internal security crisis that has plunged Dili into violent chaos.

Prime Minister John Howard had ignored the difficult task facing East Timor in the wake of the ruinous Indonesian occupation, Australian Democrats Leader Lyn Allison said today.

Mark Forbes – Wide-eyed youths brandish machetes, armed militias rampage through the streets, terrified civilians flee, soldiers lay siege to police headquarters and your sleep is broke

Hamish McDonald – Australian warships silhouetted in the calm blue waters, a squat Hercules on the airfield surrounded by young soldiers armed and wired to the teeth, and John Howard wa

George Quinn – On its independence day almost exactly four years ago, the people of East Timor seemed literally to be singing on the same page.

Damien Kingsbury – Australia's renewed intervention in East Timor will help defuse what was growing into an explosive situation, and which threatened the fledgling state.

Events in East Timor and the response internationally have given rise to a variation on gunboat diplomacy. It is gunboat democracy.