EAST TIMOR: East Timor's embattled prime minister Mari Alkatiri resigned yesterday, saying he would share responsibility for a political crisis that has gripped Asia's newest nation for over two months.
There was no immediate word on a replacement, but news of his departure was welcomed by thousands of people who have been demonstrating in the capital Dili for the past week.
They cheered and beat drums in celebration as word of his resignation spread. A convoy of about 200 buses and vans, their horns blaring, drove through the seaside capital.
Mr Alkatiri said he was stepping down to avoid the resignation of the nation's popular president Xanana Gusmao, who had threatened to quit himself unless the prime minister left office.
Mr Gusmao said in a statement he had accepted the resignation and had called for a meeting of the State Council, a presidential advisory committee, today to discuss the next step.
The prime minister has been widely blamed for violence that erupted in May as fighting within the armed forces spiralled into rioting, arson and looting in Dili.
The violence ended only with the arrival last month of a 2,700-strong Australian-led peacekeeping force that has disarmed the army and police and taken responsibility for security.
Calls for Mr Alkatiri's resignation have been the rallying cry of protests by thousands of Timorese that peaked in the past six days after damaging revelations in an Australian news documentary linked him to a plot to arm a civilian militia.
"The important thing is that the East Timorese fix up these problems themselves and it does look like they are getting to a point of resolution," Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer said in Paris.
He told reporters later the UN may have to play a greater role than was envisaged before the political crisis. The UN Security Council shut down its peacekeeping force last month, leaving a small mission in the country. However, secretary-general Kofi Annan has sent an assessment mission to look into a possible return of security personnel.
One of the country's best-known political figures, Nobel peace laureate José Ramos-Horta is a possible replacement for Mr Alkatiri should Mr Gusmao ask parliament to form a national unity government to rule until elections due by May 2007.
But Mr Ramos-Horta told reporters: "I don't want the job but I would do it if persuaded by all relevant parties." Neither he, who had resigned as foreign and defence minister on Sunday, nor Mr Gusmao - both urbane and Western-leaning - belong to the ruling Fretilin party.
The party is seen in the West as socialist-orientated, a legacy of the years its leaders spent in exile in Mozambique or Angola during East Timor's independence struggle.
Mr Ramos-Horta said it would take time to heal the wounds caused by the violence and the country should have no shame in seeking foreign help for as long as it took to return to normalcy.
"Sovereignty is beautiful - when you know how to exercise it properly," he said, adding he would press harder for the UN to administer next year's elections.
Whoever takes over, many Timorese and potential foreign investors want to see more done to rebuild the country's infrastructure and develop projects to create jobs in a country where unemployment is around 70 per cent.
Although Timor's only export is "boutique" coffee, the country has potentially vast untapped oil and gas reserves in the sea that divides it from Australia, and has already earned hundreds of millions of dollars in exploration rights.