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.