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## Neighborhoods in East Timor Abandoned

### Neighborhoods in East Timor's Capital Abandoned As Fear Grips Population

#### By ANTHONY DEUTSCH

#### The Associated Press

DILI, East Timor - Leonardo do Santos hastily nailed a sheet of rusty roofing across his front door Sunday and ran with his wife, as his neighbors rushed into the street clutching knives, rocks, metal bars, slingshots and garden tools to fight a rival gang.

Clashes in East Timor's capital have left rows of small, brightly painted stone houses looted, burned and abandoned. Violence decreased somewhat after foreign peacekeepers arrived more than a week ago, yet more than half the city's 150,000 residents have fled their homes and now live in crowded camps facing food and water shortages.

Parliament convened to address the turmoil, although lawmakers said some colleagues could not attend because they feared for their safety or lacked transport.

A quorum of 50 lawmakers in the 88-seat Parliament met as foreign troops deployed on the streets of Dili, some firing tear gas to break up clashes between rock-throwing gangs near a bridge leading to the airport.

Rival gangs set fire to several buildings near the bridge and lobbed rocks and debris at each other before Australian peacekeepers intervened. No injuries were immediately reported.

Parliament Speaker Francisco Guterres, a leader of the ruling Fretilin party, urged authorities to investigate the whereabouts of the missing lawmakers, and shrugged off criticism that the government should quit.

"The Parliament can only dissolve in the next general election, and not through demonstrations, which would set a bad example for this nation," Guterres said.

Elections are scheduled for next year, but some East Timorese blame Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri for the crisis and are demanding he resign. The unrest began after Alkatiri fired 600 disgruntled soldiers from the 1,400-strong army.

Nearly seven years after East Timor broke from former occupier Indonesia following a drawn-out independence struggle, the new state is trying to stave off civil war.

Violence erupted April 28 when a demonstration by the dismissed soldiers escalated into riots that left at least five dead. The soldiers, who claim the army opened fire on unarmed civilians, fled to the hills surrounding the seaside capital.

Before they were fired, the soldiers were on strike, claiming the government discriminated against them because they came from the west of the country, which is perceived to be more sympathetic to Indonesia.

The spiraling unrest has revealed and deepened a similar rift among ordinary citizens seen as "western" or "eastern," with attacks and counterattacks that feed hatred and distrust among longtime friends and neighbors.

East Timor's police has been confined to barracks because of its involvement in fighting between the army and ousted soldiers. The court system is not operating, and a mob sacked the office of the attorney general last week.

Without a functioning legal or law enforcement system, entire neighborhoods are abandoned to gangs hunting down opponents as they play cat-and-mouse with some 2,000 peacekeepers from Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia.

The do Santos family, including four children, sleeps outdoors at a nearby shelter but returned to its home Sunday to collect a few valued possessions.

Only because they were accepted by the "westerners" who now dominate the neighborhood were they able to walk freely down the street.

"All my clothes are gone, taken by the looters," do Santos said, sifting through broken furniture and sweeping shattered glass from the floor.

Within minutes they heard a clang of rocks against metal lampposts on the street an urgent signal known around the city meaning the enemy is near, so hide, run or come out and fight.

In this case, it announced the arrival of "easterners" wielding machetes and clubs. The do Santos family fled, as men and boys ran out of nearby houses and into the street with their weapons.

Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson warned Asian and Pacific countries of the dangers of allowing East Timor to become a failed state.

"We cannot afford to have Timor-Leste become one of those, and in doing so become a haven, perhaps, for transnational crime, for terrorism, and indeed humanitarian disasters and injustice," Nelson said at a regional security conference in Singapore.

Yet there were limits to what peacekeepers could do.

In Dili, Malaysian soldiers kicked down doors in search of arson suspects. Minutes after the troops left, a gang set fire to an adjacent row of houses. Fire spread to power lines and a tree, and the peacekeepers' armored personnel carriers rumbled back.

Portuguese paramilitary police dressed in dark uniforms and bulletproof vests and carrying firearms and clubs drove into Dili in a convoy of buses late Sunday. Some residents greeted them with cheers and flowers.

Peacekeepers have confiscated hundreds of weapons and temporarily detained gang members. Yet they have refrained from firing weapons and have often driven past scenes of looting or vandalism.

"If they come, it's OK," resident Zeca Godinho said of the peacekeepers as a building burned nearby. "But then they leave, and it starts again."

Just a few blocks away from the do Santos family house, at a crossroads with the next neighborhood, youths armed with makeshift weapons erected a checkpoint near some burned cars. They stopped passing traffic in search of rivals.

As Australian soldiers passed on a foot patrol, the boys dropped their weapons in the dirt or threw them over a fence and meandered calmly away.