Amsterdam – East Timor demanded on Monday that Australia return seized documents relating to the two countries' negotiations over oil and gas reserves thought to be worth tens of billions of dollars.

David Robie – When Timor-Leste opens its lawsuit against Australia in a United Nations courtroom spy drama in The Hague this week with the economic survival of this Asia-Pacific country on the line, a small but feisty non-government organisation will be closely monitoring proceedings.

The Hague – Tiny, young East Timor drags its giant neighbour Australia before the United Nations' top court next week in a cloak-and-dagger case with billions of dollars in natural resources at stake.

Michael Bachelard – East Timor's resistance leader turned Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, has announced he will retire as leader of the tiny republic some time this year.

Observers expect him to go by September at the latest, as jostling for his replacement begins among Dili's political class.

Richard Ackland – Let's try to join a few dots.

Dot One: In 2004, David Irvine, the head of the external spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ordered the bugging of rooms used by ministers of East Timor.

Jonathan Pearlman – Australia faces growing accusations that it spied extensively on Timor Leste during crucial talks over a deal to share gas and oil fields worth an estimated A$40 billion (S$45 billion).

Michael Sainsbury, Bangkok – Deep under the Timor Sea, there is a huge reserve of gas. Geologists now believe it is worth upwards of US$100 billion; a figure more than twice the amount estimated by Australia as recently as 2006.

Paulina Quintao – The Timor-Leste government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (MNEC) and the Indonesian Government intend to establish a commission to look into the issue of missing or separated children from 1975 until 1999 while Timor-Leste was under Indonesian occupation.

Paul Cleary – When Australian workmen turned up with an enormous crane to renovate and reinforce the office of the East Timor prime minister in early 2004, they looked like Paul Hogan in his bridge-painting days as they donned "stubby" shorts and ragged shirts with sleeves cut off.

Richard Ackland – Loose ends tend to clutter our lives and, supposedly, a new year is a good time to tidy them up or burn them to cinders.

Tom Allard – For Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, the news that Australia spied on her adopted homeland under the cover of an aid program cut especially deep.

Tom Allard – A balmy summer morning, the leafy back streets of Narrabundah in suburban Canberra, and some 15 besuited ASIO agents are ringing the doorbell of a modest red brick home that doubles as the office of lawyer Bernard Collaery.

A resurrected Timor Sea Justice Campaign will hold its first public campaign meeting on 23 January 2014 in Melbourne.

Campaign spokesperson, Tom Clarke, said ordinary Australians concerned by their government's dubious behaviour in the Timor Sea can make a difference by getting involved.

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – One of the most interesting – and most controversial – presidential hopefuls is, no doubt, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto. He is among the few who have both attracted public attention and offered new ideas and policy initiatives.

Timor-Leste has instituted proceedings in the UN's top court in relation to Asio raids on the office of a Canberra lawyer representing the tiny country.

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation agents raided Bernard Collaery's office this month and seized documents relating to a dispute with Australia over a $40bn oil and gas treaty.

Paulina Quintao – NGO La'o Hamutuk's representative Charles Scheiner urged the Timor-Leste government to halt two contracts to the Chinese Nuclear Industry Construction No. 22 (CNI22) Company that was awarded funds totaling $1,047,559 to provide tables and chairs for schools, as this company does not have experience in the delivery of the equipment.

Timor-Leste investigative journalist Jose Belo has been presented with one of the 2013 Sergio Vieira de Mello human rights awards by the President, Taur Matan Ruak. David Robie profiled the Tempo Semanal publisher in an interview in Dili a few days before the award.

The Australian Federal Police has denied seizing a computer and phones belonging to relatives of East Timor's finance and resources ministers.

Gwynne Dyer – And now for something completely different: A spy story that isn't about Edward Snowden's disclosures and the US National Security Agency's surveillance of everything and everybody.

Peter Lloyd, staff – East Timor's former president Jose Ramos-Horta says Australia would never have secured a seat on the United Nations Security Council had claims that it spied on its neighbours been known.

Damien Kingsbury – Australia and Timor-Leste are in a diplomatic lull following the revelations that Australia spied on Timor-Leste's cabinet via agents working through its aid program. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao is in South Africa for the funeral of Nelson Mandela, who had visited him in prison in Jakarta and thus helped elevate his international status.

Whatever merit the Australian government might discern in spying on the ministers of East Timor in 2004, it is beggarly that its operatives apparently went about their work in Dili using the cover of aid workers.

East Timor is ready to develop the Greater Sunrise gas fields "tomorrow" but refuses to bend to Woodside's preference for a floating project.

Tom Allard – East Timor's government believes it has identified the members of a team of four Australian spies who allegedly bugged its government offices, describing it as "very disturbing" that they apparently used the cover of an aid program.

Ezequiel Freitas – President of the Republic, Taur Matan Ruak (TMR), said the Caras Massacre that took place in 1983 was an event of great significance to the history of Timor-Leste because it served as a catalyst for many other incursions against the enemy and served as a reminder a war was being waged in the country.

Despite the usual diplomatic niceties at the celebration of the thirty-eighth anniversary of Timor-Leste's declaration of independence in Canberra last week, the raid on that nation's legal counsel in Australia, Bernard Colleary, probably says more about the current state of the relationship between the two countries.

Gordon Peake and Piers Kelly – With allegations of Australian chicanery during the Timor Sea negotiations, a definitional question emerges for the media: just what is the correct name of our northern neighbour? East Timor or Timor-Leste?

Shirley Shackleton – This week the home and offices of Australian barrister Bernard Collaery were raided, while he was in the Hague seeking arbitration for a fair deal for the Timorese over their share of their own oil.

Donald K. Anton – Claims of Australian spying on East Timor are only the latest chapter in a saga of clashes over treaties.

Damien Kingsbury – The new government is not off on the right foot in foreign policy terms, with the Indonesian spying scandal dominating headlines. But a bigger problem looms: East Timor.

For many years, Australia has been stealing the oil and gas from the Timor Sea, in an area which belongs to Timor-Leste under international legal principles. Sadly, Australia has shown its manner and its greed to make our small and poor country in this region lose our resources and sovereignty.

Nick Miller – East Timor's government will not be deterred in pressing its case to scrap an oil treaty worth billions of dollars over claims of spying by Australia, an international negotiator says.

Peter Lloyd, staff – East Timor says the Australian Government knew it would call upon the testimony of four whistleblowers in its dispute regarding a $40 billion oil and gas treaty.

Lenore Taylor – The inspector general of intelligence and security has issued an unusual public statement to deny that any former spy had raised concerns with her or her predecessor about Australian espionage in Timor.

Julian Drape – East Timor says it won't be deterred from challenging a multi-billion dollar oil and gas treaty with Australia in The Hague despite raids on a lawyer's office and the home of a key witness.

Officials from both countries met in the Netherlands for seven hours on Thursday with a full hearing at the Permanent Court of Arbitration now likely in late 2014.

It is disturbing that more than a decade after East Timor secured its independence, with the assistance of Australian forces, our nations now are in dispute. Primarily, the quarrel is about the division of many billions of dollars of revenue that will flow from developing gasfields in the Timor Sea.

Australia's role in supporting the transition of East Timor, or Timor Leste, to independence in 2002 – making it the first new sovereign state of the 21st century – was pivotal.

Bernard Keane – As the United States-style war on whistleblowers and journalists ramps up in Australia, one of the key myths about national security whistleblowers has taken another hammering.

Jane Wardell, Sydney – Attorney-General George Brandis said on Wednesday raids by Australia's domestic spy agency on the Canberra offices of a lawyer representing East Timor over Australian bugging claims were justified on grounds of national security.

Paul Cleary – Oil and espionage have gone hand in hand during the past four decades of contestation over the lucrative petroleum resources of the Timor Sea, so the latest revelations should come as no surprise, least of all to East Timor's government.

The Australia East Timor Friendship Association of South Australia today released a statement regarding the spying scandal against Timor-Leste by Australian security.

Andrew Alcock, AETFA's Information Officer said:

East Timor's prime minister says he is shocked by the Australian Government's decision to authorise raids on a lawyer and whistleblower who were set to provide evidence against Australia in The Hague.

East Timor will launch a case in The Hague tomorrow to have a $40 billion oil and gas treaty it signed with Australia ripped up.

Tom Allard – The former senior spy who blew the whistle on alleged Australian bugging of East Timor's government took his case to the intelligence watchdog but it did not investigate and advised him to get a lawyer if he wanted to take the matter further.

Clinton Fernandes – It is not hard to see why ASIO yesterday raided the office and home of a Canberra-based lawyer, Bernard Collaery, and the house of a former Australian intelligence agent.

Katharine Murphy and Lenore Taylor – A first-hand witness to alleged Australian spying against Timor-Leste in 2004 has been detained and searched at his Canberra home, according to a prominent human rights lawyer and academic, Frank Brennan.

A lawyer representing East Timor in its spying case against Australia says his office has been raided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Tom Clarke – Indonesia isn't the only country in our region upset about Australia's spying. East Timor has accused Australia not just of spying on it, but of doing so for economic gain.

David Robie, Dili – On 28 November 1975, Timor-Leste made its fateful unilateral declaration of independence. A week later, a paranoid Indonesian military, fearful of an upstart "leftwing" neighbouring government, staged its brutal invasion and 24 years of repression and massacres followed.

Rory Callinan – Six years ago, NSW magistrate Dorelle Pinch recommended that the killings of Australian journalists Brian Peters, 29, Malcolm Rennie, 28, Gary Cunningham, 27, Gregory Shackleton, 29, and Anthony Stewart, 21, in Balibo, East Timor be investigated as a war crime.

Paulina Quintao – Despite the outcry from the community for the government to ban cigarette advertising in public spaces, the Minister of Health said it won't be able to because there is no law for this.