EAST TIMOR: When East Timor becomes the world's newest country next weekend it will also officially be Asia's poorest.
The new Democratic Republic of East Timor formally comes into being at the stroke of midnight next Sunday (4 p.m. Irish time on Sunday). However, a bleak report on the outlook by the United Nations Development Programme yesterday came on the eve of a donors' conference here today which may determine whether the new nation has enough money to see it through its first year.
However, the Prime Minister-in-waiting, Mr Mari Alkereri, yesterday expressed an optimism which he said he did not feel a few weeks ago that the former Indonesian vassal and Portuguese colony would get the $77 million it was asking for to fund its budget in the year ending 2003.
Meanwhile, it seems nothing can kill the joy on Dili's chaotic streets as men in hard hats string flags in front of the city's main building, the headquarters of UNTAET, the transitional administration.
Up to September 1999 the im- posing Portuguese colonial-style mansion was the governor's residence under the Indonesians.
Next week, the UNTAET staff will move out to make way for East Timor's first democratically- elected government under the popular president Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao. To the Timorese he is just "Xanana".
In what is the first such comprehensive study in East Timor the UNDP declared East Timor the poorest in Asia in both financial and in human development terms.
Mr Tom Hyland, of the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign, reacted in Dili to the report saying it demonstrated dramatically that when Ireland chooses an Overseas Development Aid priority country in Asia it should be East Timor.
"It would be inconceivable if another country was chosen given the track record of successive Irish governments in supporting the Timorese people," he said.
The report shows that when East Timor is handed over by the UN Secretary General it will take its place as one of 20 poorest countries in the world, with a GDP per capita of just $478 and a human development rating in the same category as Angola, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.
Life expectancy in East Timor is 57, less than half the people are literate (41 per cent) and the same percentage live on less than 55 cents a day.
It shows. Several blocks away from Dili's stately house shopping in a wayside shack was by candle-light last night.
Launching the report the UNDP's resident representative, Mr Finn Reske-Nielsen, said considerable international assistance would be needed in the years ahead. "There are huge difficulties ahead for East Timor but there is huge potential here too. For many years East Timor worked alone to achieve independence. In the future, more hard work will be needed, but East Timor will not be alone."
At a press conference earlier, the foreign minister-in-waiting, Mr Jose Ramos-Horta, and Mr Alketeri praised the UN's "great work". This was seen as unusual by some UN workers. One said: "More often it is a case of biting the hand that feeds."
Meanwhile, President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia is planning a three-hour visit to East Timor on the night of its independence celebrations, an official said in Dili yesterday.
Ms Megawati will fly into Dili at 10 p.m. on Sunday and go straight to the Indonesian military cemetery in eastern Dili where she will lay wreaths, the head of her security guard said.