[The nation of East Timor is barely a month old, yet already the issue of separation of church and state has reared its ugly head – in the person of Bishop Carlos Belo. East Timorese spiritual leader and joint winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, Bishop Belo, was in a belligerent mood recently after he read an article that criticised him and the Catholic Church.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – The central government has relented a little in its approach toward East Timorese refugees by postponing the planned closure of refugee camps in East Nusa Tenggara province until December this year.

[The Dutch Government claims it has secured an agreement from Indonesia that it will continue to investigate the murder of a Dutch journalist in East Timor, almost three years ago.

Irwan Firdaus, Jakarta – Sitting silently in a packed courtroom, two current and one former Indonesian official listened Wednesday as prosecutors accused them of allowing a mob to kill refugees hiding in an East Timor church in 1999.

Dili – Three Indonesian ministers made a three hour visit to East Timor on Saturday, in an effort to enhance bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

Craig Skehan – East Timor has made a claim for all of the $30 billion Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea as part of a bid to pressure Australia into sensitive negotiations on maritime boundaries.

Australia is offering East Timor an 18 per cent stake in Greater Sunrise.

[The Timor Sea Agreement between Dili and Canberra, is due to be ratified by the East Timorese parliament soon. However, the looming ratification is causing serious unrest among MPs and other groups in East Timor, mainly over a perceived lack of consultation by Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri in negotiations for the treaty.]

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – East Timorese leaders acceded on Friday to demands by former prointegration militia commander Joao da Silva Tavares and thousands of his followers, paving the way for them to return to the newly declared state of East Timor.

[East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has made clear for the first time that former militia leaders returning from exile in West Timor will not be granted amnesty for their role in the violence surrounding the independence referendum in 1999.

Canberra – Militiamen responsible for violence when East Timor voted for independence could not expect reconciliation without first facing justice, President Xanana Gusmao said on his first official overseas visit on Monday.

The leader of the world's newest nation said the re-integration of those seeking forgiveness was a major challenge for tiny, impoverished East Timor.

East Timor considers the creation of the International Criminal Court a priority and will soon sign the UN convention establishing the tribunal, Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said Monday.

Ramos Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said Dili had "no doubts" about the importance of setting up an international court and would add its support "without reservations".

Sydney – Australia and East Timor pledged to continue their close friendship Monday during East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao's first official visit abroad since his country became independent on May 20.

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Jakarta – Indonesia and East Timor have identified a number of residual problems that they will attempt to resolve following the new country's independence which was finally declared on May 20, 2002.

Dili – Thirty-one officials from Indonesia met East Timorese leaders yesterday to push its former province to compensate Jakarta for assets left behind when it pulled out amid bloodshed in 1999 – a request that has been steadfastly rejected in the past.

Kupang – Senior Indonesian government officials on Saturday expressed willingness to allow East Timorese policemen and officials to pursue higher education in Indonesia.

The agreement was reached during an official visit Saturday to East Timor by more than 30 senior Indonesian officials, including three ministers.

Clare Black, Oslo – East Timor, a brand new nation barely one month old, hopes that the rebirth of its legendary gourmet coffee will bring some much-needed income to its people who are amongst the poorest in the world.

[Deliverance: The Inside Story of East Timor's Fight for Freedom. By Don Greenlees and Robert Garran, Allen & Unwin, 375pp, $35.]

Peter Coleman – Everyone made a "colossal miscalculation" in East Timor, according to this compelling and authoritative book – the Australian Government for a start.

Don Greenlees, Jakarta – Indonesia is sending a delegation of three ministers to East Timor in a signal that it wants a co-operative relationship with its former possession, declared independent on May 20.

Oslo – East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta said on Friday the doors of his newly-independent country were open to pro-Jakarta militia members, now living in exile in Indonesia.

Jill Jolliffe – An incursion by Indonesian warships into East Timorese waters last month was a ploy by military hardliners to prevent President Megawati Sukarnoputri attending independence celebrations, according to East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

They are Dr Alkatiri's first comments on the incident, which cast a shadow over the May 20 celebrations.

Jill Jolliffe, Dili – East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has put the new country's politicians on notice to lift their performance, in a free-wheeling attack on the Government just 23 days after it took office.

Sanur – The Indonesian government is expected to complete the repatriation process of 10,000 families of refugees back to East Timor by August this year, in a bid to resolve thecomplex refugee problems and to ease the financial burden that the state has to shoulder for the past few years.

Jakarta – Indonesian prosecutors dropped their investigation into the killing of a Dutch journalist in East Timor that took place in 1999, a spokesman said Thursday.

Jakarta – Indonesia paid for anti-independence militias responsible for much of the violence in East Timor in 1999 when it voted for independence, a former government official told a court Thursday.

[There are fears that violence could once again return to East Timor, after the announcement by former militia leader Joao Tavares that he intends to return home with some 3,000 followers. The refugee body, the UNHCR, has confirmed it will facilitate a meeting on Friday between Tavares and East Timorese authorities who have previously talked about the possibility of an amnesty.

[Australians keen to help in the reconstruction of East Timor are being asked to make a financial commitment. The world's newest nation will be looking in its own backyard for the foreign investors needed for everything from roads and phones to farming and fishing, naming Australia and Asia as the best sources of investment and expertise.

A former district chief in East Timor during Indonesian rule said that provincial authorities had often paid the pro-Jakarta militias who launched an orgy of violence against independence supporters in 1999.

Jakarta – Witnesses testified before the human rights ad hoc trial for the 1999 East Timor atrocities on Tuesday that pro-Jakarta militia groups attacked proindependence supporters taking refuge in the St. Ave Maria Church in Suai town, Covalima regency, East Timor, on September 6, 1999.

Canberra – The federal government was examining introducing duty-free status for all goods of East Timor origin, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.

Speaking at the launch of the Australia East Timor Business Council, Mr Downer said East Timor faced great economic challenges now that it had achieved political independence.

Dear Fellow Citizens,

We have been independent and masters of our destiny for 23 days. Yet, it is somewhat ironic to feel as masters of our destiny without a corresponding feeling of change.

The former chief of East Timorese pro-Jakarta militia groups is planning to return home from exile in Indonesia with some 3,000 followers, a report said.

"The precise time has yet to be determined but what is certain is that we are determined to return to East Timor in the near future," Joao da Silva Tavares was quoted by in Monday's Koran Tempo newspaper as saying.

Don Greenlees – Soon after midnight on May 20, after the East Timorese flag had been raised, and the new nation declared independent, Indonesia's armed forces commander Admiral Widodo Adisucipto went up on the deck of the support ship Tandjung Kambani and watched the celebratory fireworks erupt along the East Timorese shoreline.

Jakarta – A former Indonesian district army chief admitted on Thursday that a man alleged to have led a bloody attack on a church in East Timor in April 1999 was a soldier.

Lieutenant Colonel Asep Kuswandi, formerly head of the Liquica district military command, told a human rights court that Tome Diego was a member of the Liquica military.

Greg Sheridan – Want to hear something strange? East Timorese representatives have had discussions with Indonesian authorities about the possibility of Indonesia's armed forces, the TNI, helping to train East Timor's nascent force.

Aaron Goodman, Dili (Inter Press Service) – Augostino da Costa Cabral's eyes were wide open, and his smile seemed unbreakable. But he could not sit still, and was shifting nervously in his seat on the gymnasium floor.

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – The Central Jakarta District Court rejected on Tuesday the request by a group of East Timorese refugees demanding former president BJ Habibie to pay Rp 1 trillion (US$115.6 million) in compensation for losses incurred following East Timor's 1999 vote for independence.

Jakarta – A former school teacher told an Indonesian human rights court on Wednesday that he helped load the bodies of murdered priests, women and children from the East Timor township of Suai into cars and drive miles to bury them.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – Paramilitary leader Eurico Guterres, notorious for his leadership of the East Timorese Aitarak, or Thorn militia, has been charged with crimes against humanity along with six others.

Yemris Fointuna, Kupang – The Indonesian Military (TNI) Headquarters has yet to consider transferring the headquarters of the Udayana Regional Military Command from Denpasar, Bali, to the East Nusa Tenggara capital of Kupang, Udayana Regional Military Commander Maj. Gen. Willem T. da Costa said on Monday.

Ian Munro – It is more than seven years since Anna Fam, now 70, fled East Timor with her mother and several of her grandchildren. There is not a moment's hesitation when asked if she would choose to return.

Max Lane – A major theme of the ceremony that took place in Dili on May 20 to proclaim the independence of East Timor was that the three-year period of United Nations transitional administration was a great success. However, East Timor has been one of the great failures of the UN.

Ian Timberlake, Dili – An official has revealed new details about counterinsurgency operations two years ago that killed several pro-Indonesia militiamen and crippled their efforts to destabilize East Timor's transition to independence.

Ian Munro – Premier Steve Bracks has asked Prime Minister John Howard not to force 1700 asylum seekers to return to East Timor.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Bracks said many of the 1400 East Timorese in Melbourne had no homes to return to and did not want to revisit the scenes of trauma and destruction experienced during the Indonesian occupation.

About a quarter of East Timorese exiles in Portugal who return to their native shores decide to come back to the European country after seeing conditions in Timor, a Portuguese NGO has revealed.

East Timor has come a long way since the establishment of the United Nations Transitional Administration in the country, in 1999. The world's newest State has emerged, and in May of this year, a new labour code was signed into force.

Alan Boyd, Sydney – Worried about the strategic vulnerability of its eastern flanks, Indonesia is discreetly lobbying for East Timor to be granted early observer status in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Harald Bruning – Less than a fortnight after becoming the world's newest nation, East Timor is struggling to consolidate its hard-won democracy and solve myriad social problems left behind by Portuguese colonial neglect, brutal Indonesian occupation and rather transitory nation-building efforts by the United Nations.

Jill Jolliffe – A week after East Timor became independent, the terrace of Dili's City Cafe is near deserted. Days before, it was crowded with media crews, international VIPs who had graced the independence ceremony and the United Nations officials who have made it their watering hole since it opened in 2000.

Ian Timberlake, Motaain – Joao Pereira's East Timor home is just a few miles from here, but until recently it was a distance he had been reluctant to travel.

Joanna Jolly, Dili – The government on Friday urged Indonesia to abandon any hope of retrieving assets from its former territory of East Timor, saying Jakarta's brutality and economic exploitation during its occupation nullified any claims to what it left behind.