Timorese ask NZ to help quell rebellion

New Zealand soldiers are poised to fly to East Timor to help end fighting between the military and disgruntled former soldiers.

Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, said yesterday that New Zealand and Australian troops would "disarm renegade troops and police rebelling against the State".

Mr Ramos-Horta said both countries had agreed to the request.

Officials are seeking more information before the Government sends troops in response to the request, Prime Minister Helen Clark said this morning.

Today diplomats and a military attache stationed in Jakarta in Indonesia would assess the situation.

"So that's where we are at the present time. It's very important not to walk into what is a factional dispute, in some respects, and be seen to be taking sides," Helen Clark said on National Radio.

"We have to also be mindful the (United Nations) Security Council is having consultations as we speak."

The Government is urging about 40 New Zealanders in East Timor to leave. Around 30 soldiers are understood to be ready to go.

The number and type of troops New Zealand might send would depend on whether they were going to help an evacuation or to restore law and order.

Helen Clark said: "The request was to provide elements of our defence force to support theirs and the suggestion appeared to be they might be looking for some military to go to their border area while they brought their own troops closer into Dili."

Gun battles raged around Dili yesterday for the second day running, rival military factions exchanging fire around an Army base in the western outskirts of the capital.

Australia yesterday began evacuating all non-essential public servants.

New Zealand has made no such move but upgraded its travel advisory, giving a warning against travelling there.

The Defence Force has a contingency plan to evacuate people. Spokesman Mike Shatford said troops were ready and on stand-by. "It has to come through the Prime Minister and until we hear from her, we are not in a position to do anything," he said.

Worried UN officials in the ramshackle capital raised the level of its security alert as President Xanana Gusmao ordered Government forces to hunt down renegades.

At least one pro-Government soldier was wounded yesterday and was undergoing emergency surgery to remove shrapnel from his neck.

Terrified residents fled the outer suburb of Tasi Tolu, saying there was intense fighting between pro-Government soldiers and rebels.

International aid worker Nata Andjaparidze said she and her husband had been trapped in their house when fighting broke out. "It wasn't just a normal exchange of gunfire. It was more intense. Machineguns and grenades were being used."

"We only succeeded in getting out of the area during an interval in the shooting of about five minutes."

East Timor, or Timor-Leste, formally came into being in 2002 after a long-running struggle for independence from Indonesia, which took over the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

New Zealand and Australian troops last played a leading role in a 1999 United Nations peace mission which helped bring order to Timor.

The UN had been scheduled to pull out of East Timor this week but because of the violence will stay for another month.

Meanwhile, Helen Clark has announced that some of the New Zealand troops rushed to the Solomon Islands last month to quell rioting in the capital, Honiara, are to return.

She confirmed 30 police would withdraw, leaving 37 officers there.

THE TIMOR TROUBLES

* Around 600 soldiers - a third of the East Timorese Army - were dismissed in March amid claims of ethnic favouritism.

* The soldiers' grievances have run parallel to political upheavals which have seen Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri withstand efforts to depose him.

- additional reporting NZPA