President B.J. Habibie of Indonesia yesterday set August 8th as the date for a vote on whether East Timor should become independent and agreed to a UN presence during the ballot.
Meanwhile, community leaders in East Timor warned that August was too late for a referendum and would give pro-Indonesia militias months to prosecute a campaign of intimidation.
Mr Habibie said he had chosen the date so he could report the result of the UN-supervised poll in his August 29th address to Indonesia's new national legislature, to be elected in June.
Countries he wanted in the UN "civilian police" were Australia, the United States, Japan, the Philippines, Germany as the current head of the EU, and Britain. Mr Habibie said the UN could add others, but did not indicate the size of the force nor the date it would arrive in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony which Indonesia invaded and annexed in the mid-1970s.
The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, speaking after a summit with Mr Habibie on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, said: "It is important there is an adequate number" of UN troops.
An Australian source said after the talks: "Probably they will start as soon as possible, after May 5th . . . a tiny team of five or six men would go in almost straight away."
The Indonesian Foreign Minister, Mr Ali Alatas, will take an agreement on the voting mechanisms - which includes provisions for "civilian police" to supervise the ballot - to the UN in New York for signing on May 5th, Mr Habibie said.
Mr Howard said Australia would provide 20 million Australian dollars ($13 million) - half in cash and half in logistical support - towards the estimated $30 million needed to set up the police presence.
Immediate reaction to the announcement was mixed, with the jailed East Timorese rebel leader, Mr Xanana Gusmao, expressing fears that unchecked killings would continue for the three months up to the vote.
Indonesia's "ambassador-at-large" for East Timor, Mr Lopes da Cruz, defended the militias. He said they would attack any UN peacekeeping force deployed in the territory.
East Timorese supporters of autonomy within Indonesia said the vote was too soon, while the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr Antonio Guterres, also reacted warily. "It is a moment of joy but also of concern, given that very serious situations persist on the ground," he told reporters in Lisbon.
Two of the proposed parties to the civilian police force, Japan and Britain, said they would do all they could to make it a success.
A member of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Roman Catholic diocese of Dili said the referendum should be brought forward for security reasons. "If East Timorese have to wait until August 8th for the polling then the people might have all been killed by then," the member, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
David Shanks adds:
The peace process was "spinning way out of control", said Mr Tom Hyland of the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign. "There is no way a ballot can take place with intimidation going on," he said.
Rejecting Indonesia's right to decide where peacekeeping troops and monitors should come from he said responsibility lay with Mr Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, "to go to the security council to demand a mandate to put UN peacekeepers on the ground in East Timor".