Mark Dodd, Dili – Two days before the start of East Timor's election campaign for a Constituent Assembly, the territory's United Nations administrator, Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, has promised maximum security to ensure a peaceful and trouble-free ballot.

On July 5, representatives of the East Timor Transitional Cabinet, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor and the Australian government met in Dili and signed the Timor Sea Arrangement, concluding 10 months of negotiating and wrangling over a new deal to replace the Timor Gap treaty.

With Wednesday passing as the final deadline for East Timorese to challenge the list of proposed candidates for the upcoming elections, the United Nations transitional administration today said that all political parties and independent candidates had been officially registered.

Only 666 of the 1,250 East Timorese refugees Indonesian authorities said wanted to return to their homeland last month have been able to do so, UN officials said on Tuesday.

Jakarta – UN officials in East Timor raised concern Tuesday about the fate of refugees who chose to be repatriated from squalid camps in Indonesia during an Indonesian-run census last month.

Dili – As a UN security team toured refugee camps near Indonesian controlled West Timor's border with East Timor Tuesday, officials of the world body in Dili warned that pro-Jakarta militias were still intimidating refugees.

Mark Dodd, Dili – Indonesian security forces have arrested 23 hardcore militiamen including the notorious leader of the gang involved in the 1999 massacre in East Timor's Suai cathedral.

The UN has its own investigation team in East Timor. Some prosecutions have started against minor players. But the power to investigate stops abruptly at the border with West Timor.

Dili – East Timor's political parties have agreed to sign a non-violence pact to avoid bloodshed before and after historic elections next month, the United Nations said yesterday.

East Timor will vote on August 30 for a new 88-member governing body that will help draft a constitution and steer the nascent nation to full independence sometime next year.

Jakarta – Australia and East Timor signed a multi-billion dollar agreement Thursday on dividing royalties from oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea despite an unsavoury row between key political leaders.

East Timor's big hope for independence was signed yesterday – a pact ensuring the soon-to-be nation has economic security through oil and gas revenue. Tough bargaining between Australia and the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor produced a deal to share oil and gas revenues from the Timor Sea.

Mark Dodd, Saburai village – After leaving the squalor of a refugee camp in West Timor, one of militia leader Victor Lopes's first acts on returning to his mountain village was to register for East Timor's August 30 elections. Whether he will be able to vote is another issue – a day after arriving home, he surrendered himself into UN police custody.

The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, says it is "generous". The Northern Territory Chief Minister, Mr Burke, calls it "extremely generous".

Nigel Wilson – Billions of dollars in Timor Sea investment remain in doubt despite the signing in Dili today of a framework agreement on sharing revenues from oil and gas developments.

The new Timor Gap agreement was signed today with the tensions of tough negotiations still apparent.

[This is an exclusive extract from "Appeasing Jakarta: Australia's Complicity in the East Timor Tragedy", the second in the Quarterly Essay series published by Black Inc., Melbourne, $9.95.]

John Birmingham – The battalion's nickname was strictly and bitterly ironic: "The Brave Ones". A fighting unit with a proud history of child murder, rape, plunder and riot.

Geoffrey Barker – It will be the ironic fate of independent East Timor to have its key international economic and security relationships with three countries responsible for much of its historic suffering: Portugal, Indonesia and Australia.

Vanya Tanaja, Liquica – Amidst the rubble of government offices which the jungle is starting to reclaim stands a flagpole flying, not the Indonesian red and white, but the red flag, the flag of the Socialist Party of Timor.

Craig Skehan – East Timor will receive $7 billion over 20 years under a historic agreement with Australia on the sharing of oil and gas revenues from fields in the Timor Sea.

"It will make the difference between being mired in poverty and having a chance to provide a better life for the people," East Timor's chief negotiator, Mr Peter Galbraith, said last night.

Ten political parties, out of the 16, registered with the Independent Electoral Commission are disappointed with the aid package made available by Untaet.

The first major trial of atrocities committed in East Timor by Indonesian forces and proxy militias got underway in Dili Tuesday, with a three-judge panel hearing preliminary issues behind closed doors.

East Timor's 16 parties and UN transition administration have completed the draft of a "National Unity Pact", which expresses support for the election of independence leader Xanana Gusmao as the territory's first president, a Dili official said Tuesday.

Wendy Pugh, Melbourne – In an upheaval of Australia's energy market, petroleum and pipeline companies are racing to nail down multi-billion-dollar projects to deliver new supplies of gas across the country's vast distances.

Approximately 93 per cent of the estimated population in East Timor have been registered in advance of upcoming elections, the United Nations mission in the territory announced today.

The UN administration in East Timor has prepared a package of wide-ranging logistical and material aid for 16 parties and independent candidates contesting the territory's first elections, but it does not plan to provide direct financial help.

Mark Dodd, Dili – The United Nations has told the people of East Timor they will be virtually self-governing from September 15 – but that the UN will decide who will form the government.

A group of presumed anti-independence militiamen opened fire Thursday on a patrol of UN peacekeepers in the East Timorese district of Maliana, near the border with Indonesia.

The head of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) today presented the first State of the Nation address to the East Timorese National Council, giving an in-depth overview of the progress to date and the challenges that lie ahead.

Atambua – Facing the prospect of resettling tens of thousands of East Timorese refugees, an Indonesian government delegation on Thursday appealed to pro-Jakarta militia leaders to return home.

Paula Doran – For half of his 30 years Domingos lived chained to a wooden bench behind his village home in the hills of East Timor. His family was so afraid of his unexplained aggression that they bound his wrists and feet with chains.

Ray Brindal, Canberra – Australian and East Timorese representatives have resolved many of their outstanding differences about a planned new treaty covering royalties from energy production in the Timor Sea, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Thursday.

Mark Dodd, Dill – The United Nations in East Timor will encourage staff to volunteer for HIV tests but cannot make them compulsory on human rights grounds.

A leading Timorese aid worker has branded as a "sham" an Indonesian canvassing drive which found that 98% of East Timorese refugees confined to camps in West Timor did not want to go home.

A group of unidentified youths set fire Wednesday to a school in the East Timorese city of Baucau, 130 kms east of Dili, causing serious material damage. No one was hurt in the incident. UN civil police investigators said the group of between five and 10 people had set fire to the building at about 2:30 a.m. local time.

Joanna Jolly – East Timorese independence leader Xanana Gusmao said he supports pardons for militiamen who are found guilty of committing atrocities during the territory's 1999 vote for independence.

Sixteen political parties have nominated candidates to run in the August elections for East Timor's Constituent Assembly, meeting the deadline set for noon local time on Wednesday, UNTAET, the United Nations Transitional Administration in the territory, said today.

Jane Counsel – A United States company is stepping up efforts to settle a 25-year dispute over the oil and gas riches of the Timor Gap, announcing yesterday it would launch legal proceedings to validate its claims.

Geoffrey Barker – A wizened brown man with black teeth squatted in the dusty Balibo roadside with eight 5-litre plastic jerry cans of kerosene he had lugged 8 kilometres up steep jungle hills from the smugglers' market on the border between East Timor and Indonesian West Timor.

Maputo – Guterres, visiting president of the Timorese liberation movement (Fretilin), declared here on Tuesday that he is confident his party will win in the country's first presidential election scheduled for August 30. Guterres made the remarks immediately after an audience with Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, who is also president of the ruling Frelimo party.

The civil registration process has been a success. Since the start of it on 24 February till its closing on 22 June, 777,989 Timorese have been registered at the various centers in the country. The total population of Timor Lorosae has been estimated at 812,000 people.

George Quinn – Personally I don't think Indonesia will break up, but we are talking here of probabilities, and there is an outside chance, but a real chance, that current stresses will tear the nation apart. If this happens in any comprehensive way, the new state of East Timor will find itself the star player in a whole new regional ball game.

A group of protesters has demonstrated outside the Indonesian consulate in Melbourne on the first day of Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid's Australian visit.

Geoffrey Barker – An armada of big, white four-wheel-drive vehicles cruises and clogs the dusty roads of Dili carrying the army of United Nations soldiers, policemen and civil servants that is preparing the world's newest impoverished nation for independence.

Geoffrey Barker – Sergio Vieira de Mello says emphatically, perhaps too emphatically, that he is convinced East Timor's coming constituent assembly elections will be free of violence despite the country's long history of political violence.

Dili says it does not recognize claims by an American petroluem company that it obtained concession rights to exploit oil and natural gas in the Timor Gap from Portuguese colonial authorities in 1970s.

Hamish McDonald – Indonesian submarines and combat aircraft shadowed so closely ships carrying Australian and New Zealand troops into East Timor in 1999 that escorting warships went onto full battle stations alert, it has been revealed.

Mark Dodd, Dili – East Timor's de facto government, the National Council, has backed the formation of an international war crimes tribunal to prosecute leaders of anti-independence militias and their Indonesian army supporters.

The United States Senate approved Thursday a resolution condemning the "disproportionate" sentences an Indonesian court recently applied to the self-confessed killers of three UN aid workers.

The secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Timor (PST) Avelinho Coelho said Tuesday if the party gets majority seats in the 30 August election it will make Tetun the national language of the country.

Rod McGuirk, Darwin – The HIV virus had taken hold in East Timor and spread into Australia, a Dili-based doctor said today. As many as 15 foreign workers, mostly Africans, evacuated from East Timor for treatment at the Royal Darwin Hospital, have tested positive to HIV, Dr Dan Murphy said.