E. Timor wants foreign troops to stay on

E. Timor wants foreign troops to stay on

DILI, East Timor (Agencies): An independent East Timor should
ask foreign troops to stay on after the United Nations pulls out
if Indonesia does not rein in violent militias, an East Timorese
leader said on Wednesday.

Nobel peace laureate Jose Ramos-Horta said the international
community had an obligation to help protect East Timor as long as
pro-Jakarta militias based in Indonesian West Timor posed a
threat.

There has been an upsurge in militia activity ahead of
Wednesday's first anniversary of a United Nations-brokered ballot
that saw the eastern half of Timor island vote to split from
Indonesia after more than 23 years of often brutal rule.

Pro-Jakarta militias rampaged after the vote, killing
hundreds, leaving much of East Timor in ruins and forcing
thousands to flee to refugee camps in West Timor.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in Dili for the
anniversary events, said Canberra was prepared to provide troops
for a longer deployment if the security situation was bad enough.

The congress of the main East Timor pro-independence group,
the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), late on
Tuesday voted to seek continued foreign military presence after
the UN withdraws following elections due by the end of 2001.

"So as long as we have (the militias) it is (an) obligation of
the international community to face the challenge, the threat by
keeping in East Timor a number of battalions beyond
independence," said Ramos-Horta, deputy head of CNRT.

The militias, who recently killed two UN peacekeepers, operate
from refugee camps in West Timor, where Indonesian troops and
police have failed to halt their activities.

Australia and New Zealand would most likely provide the bulk
of any extended force, which would be smaller than the existing
almost 8,000 strong peacekeeping contingent.

"We are not going to abandon East Timor," Downer told
reporters. "Obviously, East Timor will need to be secure."

But Downer said Canberra would prefer to work in a UN force.

"It's possible that there will be a need for the United
Nations peacekeeping operation after the point of independence
and obviously we'll play our part in that if we're asked to do
so, which you could safely assume we will be.

On Wednesday, East Timorese in their thousands commemorated
the first anniversary of their costly vote for independence from
Indonesia with thanksgiving and prayers for their dead.

Fears that the militia would stage terror attacks to spoil the
festivities did not materialize.

"There have been no incidents today, nothing since yesterday,"
Lt. Col. Brynjar Nymo, spokesman for the peacekeepers told AFP
referring to an exchange of fire between Australian peacekeepers
on the border on Tuesday.

The day of festivities started at Dili's seafront cathedral,
where some 1,500 people, dressed in their Sunday best, attended a
thanksgiving mass conducted by Nobel laureate Bishop Carlos
Ximenes Felipe Belo.

Another 3,000 people packed the grounds, many having walked in
procession to the cathedral under a scorching sun, singing and
carrying flowers.

Inside the church, 10 fighters in camouflage fatigues
represented the Falintil guerrillas who had fought Indonesian
troops in the mountains of East Timor for decades after the 1975
invasion.

Also present were scores of Roman Catholic nuns, independence
leader Xanana Gusmao, Ian Martin, the UN official who headed the
United Nations team that oversaw the Aug 30 1999 vote, and Sergio
Vieira De Mello, the head of the UN Transitional Administration
in East Timor.