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East Timor's Government says United Nations forces failed to help President Jose Ramos Horta after he was shot in an assassination attempt in Dili this morning. He was shot in the arm and stomach after fugitive rebel leader Alfredo Reinado launched a pre-dawn raid on his home. Mr Ramos Horta is now in a serious but stable condition in Royal Darwin Hospital after being evacuated on a Careflight plane this afternoon. He was sedated on the flight from Dili to Darwin and the hospital says he is suffering three gunshot wounds - two to the upper chest and one to...

East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta has been wounded in a pre-dawn attack on his home that killed a guard, says army spokesman Major Domingos da Camara said. It was unclear what condition Ramos-Horta - a Nobel Peace laureate - was in following Monday morning's attack, he said. However Reuters reported he had been wounded in the stomach, quoting a military spokesman. House guards shot back, killing attacking rebel soldier Alfredo Reinado, who was wanted on murder charges for a flare up of violence in 2006, da Camara said. Two cars passed Ramos-Horta's house on the outskirts of the capital, Dili,...

A GRENADE was thrown into an Australian Defence Force (ADF) compound near the Australian embassy in the East Timorese capital Dili. The ADF is reviewing security in Dili after the explosion last night damaged vehicles and a building. A defence spokeswoman confirmed today the explosion was caused by a grenade. "The explosion has been confirmed as the explosion of a grenade," she said. No one was hurt by the explosion, which occurred late yesterday evening in the grounds of a house used by the ADF's military training scheme in East Timor, the defence co-operation program. The house is adjacent to...

AUSTRALIAN troops have killed four East Timor rebels, but their leader Alfredo Reinado has escaped an attempt to capture him. President Xanana Gusmao today said Reinado remained a fugitive after escaping a raid on his camp in the East Timorese town of Same. Four people fighting with Reinado were killed by Australian troops, he said. No civilians were injured. The president said the operation to capture Reinado was continuing. A Defence spokesman in Canberra said no Australians had been killed or wounded. "The purpose of the operation was to apprehend Alfredo Reinado and his associates," he said. "We have not...

The UN has appointed Antero Lopes as Acting Police Commissioner for the UN peacekeeping operation Timor East, the world body announced Tuesday. Lopes joined the UN Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT) in mid-August. He had previously assisted in the planning of the police component of the new mission as a member of the assessment mission led by Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Envoy, Ian Martin, in June. From 1993 to 1995 Lopes served as a Regional Commander and Chief of Operations in the former Yugoslavia, where he was also co-founder of the project that lead to the Human Rights Commission...

THE aggressive anti-Australian tone of East Timor's response to the Becora prison breakout is a sure sign that Canberra will have great difficulty winning an extension when the joint "green helmet-blue helmet" security arrangement is reviewed by the UN Security Council next month. Under the UN mandate passed by the council 10 days ago, the Australian-led stabilisation force has authority to operate in East Timor separately from the UN's 1600-strong police deployment. But as a concession to the many opponents of this shared security system, the council ordered UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to review the arrangement and report back within...

FOR years the United Nations attempted to cover up perverted and outrageous behaviour by uniformed and civilian personnel who have served in East Timor since 1999. But as a new wave of more than 2000 UN-employed police and staff prepare to travel to the capital Dili, Sukehiro Hasegawa, the top UN official in East Timor, has acknowledged for the first time that the UN system failed to bring anyone to justice for crimes that included sex abuse of children and bestiality. Dr Hasegawa declared that the UN's Integrated Mission in East Timor (UNMIT), which became operational on Monday, would enforce...

THE government has started cutting troop numbers in East Timor but up to 2000 personnel could remain in place until the security situation fully stabilises. Prime Minister John Howard flagged the reduction when he visited Dili last month on his first trip to the tiny nation since it erupted in violence three months ago. Australia had about 3000 army, navy and air force personnel in Timor at the height of its operation. Defence today released a statement which said it had begun a gradual reduction of its forces in Timor after assessing that the security situation had improved in Dili....

SUSPECTED French terrorist Willie Brigitte tried to get information from his wife, former soldier Melanie Brown about the top-secret spy facility at Pine Gap, French police sources say. During her four days of interrogation by French officials in Paris last month, police said Ms Brown recalled incidents with Brigitte in Sydney that, on reflection, seemed suspicious to her. In particular, Ms Brown is understood to have told French interrogators that Brigitte questioned her at length about the US-Australian electronic intelligence station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs. He asked her if she had ever been inside the base when...

THE Sydney woman who in September wed al-Qaeda operative and alleged terrorist Willie Brigitte after converting to Islam had been part of a Jewish gay group just 18 months earlier. Melanie Brown was photographed on the edge of a float in the 2002 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, wearing long lace-up Doc Martens. The float called "Twice Blessed" was built by Dayenu, a support group for Sydney's Jewish gays and lesbians. The Daily Telegraph understands Ms Brown became part of Dayenu in 2000 and then worked to build its floats in both 2001 and 2002. A former member of Dayenu...

UNITED Nations peacekeepers have abandoned at least 20 babies fathered with poverty-stricken Timorese women. A UN investigation has also uncovered a culture of cover-up, in which babies born to peacekeepers and sex crimes committed by UN staff in the past seven years have been kept secret because of a "fear of shame and embarrassment' in the deeply religious country. The findings will shock the UN bureaucracy as it prepares to boost by thousands its peacekeeping force in East Timor. A report on the investigation, obtained by The Age, recommends that a policy of zero tolerance of sexual misconduct be enforced...

How [radical] Islam makes one into a fascist, whether you are Arab, black, etc. The broader view of the deep & wide reality of Islamofascism What do the Arab Muslim massacre in NYC WTC, The Pakistani Muslim bombing in London, the Arab Muslim bombing in Madrid, an Indonesian attack on Australians in Bali, an Arab Muslim racist attack on an ordinary Jew in Paris, Arabs' onslaught in the genocide campaign in Sudan, WW2's Bosnian Muslims attacking Christian Serbs, Jordanian Arab murderer: Zarqawi that seperated (Nazi style) between Shiite & Sunni kids on a bus, Arab slave masters in Mauritania, a...

AUSTRALIAN peacekeepers in East Timor will be paid less than their counterparts in Iraq, because their mission isn't "warlike". Defence Minister Brendan Nelson broke the news of the decision to troops during a lightning visit to Dili yesterday, and also told them they would get less prestigious medals. Addressing a group of mostly 3RAR soldiers in a hangar at Dili's heliport, Dr Nelson said they would receive a basic tax-free daily allowance of $78. That compares with $150 a day for those serving in Iraq. With field and seagoing allowances plus allowances for any dependant children, the maximum a soldier...

AEONS ago, in another life, I undertook a course in counselling people who were considering suicide. We were told that a suicide attempt represents a peak of experience. Even for someone perennially depressed, to get to the point of attempting suicide is a rare and unusually intense experience. Therefore, one of the central strategies in avoiding suicides is to get people past the peak. If you do, another peak may not arise again for a long time, perhaps ever. What is true of depressed people is also true of depressed nations. The moment just before they pass from being merely...

NEW Zealand troops announced their arrival in Dili with a fearsome haka today, sending clouds of dust over the troubled East Timor capital as they stamped their feet in the traditional Maori war dance. While the Kiwis have been on patrol in the dangerous Becora area since early last week, they performed the ceremony today as a formal greeting to Australia's Brigadier Mick Slater, who commands international troops in the city. "Kamate, kamate – ka ora ka ora (I die, I die – I live, I live)," a group of 30 New Zealand troops roared, thumping their chests in unison...

THE United Nations has ordered staff in East Timor not to co-operate with Australian Federal Police investigating the massacre of 12 unarmed Timorese officers by renegade soldiers, prompting allegations of a cover-up. An email from the UN's deputy representative in Timor, Pakistani General Anis Bajwa, had been circulated to all staff, including employees evacuated to Australia, directing them not to assist AFP detectives investigating the worst atrocity since the violence of 1999. A copy of the email had been passed to Australia's Embassy in Dili, outraged diplomats and AFP sources confirmed to AAP. Earlier today the UN denied the email...

AUSTRALIA will play hard ball with the United Nations over any fresh resolution for East Timor, insisting on controlling the military and policing aspects of the mission. It is understood the Government wants virtually no UN interference over security functions in the trouble-plagued country. That could mean a long military deployment for our troops -- and a heavy bill for taxpayers. Government sources yesterday confirmed Australia would draw a line in the sand on security but added there was still a "long way to go" in negotiations for a new security council resolution. Meanwhile, sources have revealed Prime Minister John...

AUSTRALIA'S necessary military intervention in East Timor is now hostage to the political divisions and constitutional deadlock that have been played out during the past week. This should end the romantic and unrealistic view of East Timor that has shaped Australia's public debate since the 1975 Indonesian invasion, driven relentlessly by Australia's media. The ministries in Jakarta will be rocking with laughter this week. In seven short years East Timor has ceased to be Indonesia's problem and has become Australia's problem. Consider these harsh truths. The reason Indonesia invaded East Timor 31 years ago (having previously ignored the territory) is...

MAYBE this past week has taught us to pity. Because look: East Timor is being forgiven like Iraq never is. Its capital can be looted, its soldiers can gun down its police, its gangs can murder children, its people can be made to live on charity, its politicians can squabble over the power they then abuse -- but no fool here says freedom was a mistake. Even as our soldiers guard refugees cowering in church yards, still no commentator sneers that it all shows we were crazy to liberate East Timor in 1999. No one is saying these 900,000 East...

THE kumbaya crowd which pressed for East Timor's independence must shoulder much of the blame for the failure of its dysfunctional Government. But while the collective of liberation theologists and civil rights lawyers cheered Fretilin's Portugese-educated Marxist guerrilla leaders, the same candle-wavers protested against the toppling of the mass murdering Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Yet East Timor, with a population estimated at about one million, whose independence was internationally recognised on May 20, 2002, is now arguably in proportionately worse shape than Iraq, population 26 million, where the first election under its new constitution took place just last December. The...