Crucial post aims to keep weapons out of Dili

DILI - The road west from Dili runs tight along the coastline, leaving the city at Taci Tolu into country where anything can happen.

A group of 160 Timorese soldiers and police live in a barracks there with their families and some refugees.

Between them and the city are the 31 men of Burnham-based 2nd/1st battalion, housed in a school and sharing the countryside with grazing goats.

Quiet as it seems, this is the crucial post, guarding access to the city and preventing any of the thousands of weapons circulating among rebels, militia and thugs from adding to the violence that has overtaken Dili.

Since they set up their roadblock on Sunday, the haul has been slim: a single sword. But then they take the weapons from a group of Timorese soldiers, secure them in a New Zealand vehicle and take them to a military camp at Hera on the far side of Dili.

There the weapons are returned and the men confined to barracks in the agreement that is keeping rival factions from one another's throats in a clash between Army, rebel soldiers and police.

"We are trying to get police to come back to their barracks disarmed," Platoon Commander Major Tony Robinson said. "Then we can get police out on patrol."

Some were moved from the Army compound at Taci Tolu on Monday and taken into town by the New Zealanders. During the day about 130 police came out of hiding in the hills to surrender their weapons to soldiers of the coalition force.

This is familiar territory to the New Zealanders, many of whom served here after the UN intervention following the bloody independence vote of 1999.

Platoon Commander Lieutenant John Lawrey has previously served here, helping to train the now disintegrated Timorese Army. He finds it sad but understandable that chaos should have overtaken a country that has just emerged from 200 years of Portuguese and Indonesian rule.