In E. Timor, an Optimistic Enterprise Turns to Ashes

Meanwhile, the police emerged as a rival force, with senior officers drawn largely from the west of the island. The United Nations favored the police over the armed forces, contending that police were better suited to maintaining law and order, and lavished money, equipment and new uniforms on them while their military counterparts received secondhand camouflage from Portugal and China. But U.N. officials never tackled the corruption and politicking that was becoming increasingly apparent within the ranks of the police, Western and East Timorese officials said.

Still, if not for an escalating series of missteps by rival factions over the last five months, the simmering tensions might not have exploded into civil strife.

In January, about 400 westerners in the armed forces signed a petition alleging discrimination and poor treatment. When they were ignored, they took their complaints to the streets the next month, demonstrating outside the office of President Xanana Gusmao.

"We asked the military institution to solve our problem and pay attention to our complaints. They did not listen," Lt. Gastao Salsinha, leader of the dissident soldiers, said in a telephone interview from the remote district where he is now in hiding. "Instead, they gave weapons to people in order to eliminate those of us who brought the petition."

Rather than addressing the grievances, which included discontent over pay, living conditions and the deployment of troops far from their families in the west, the military in March dismissed nearly 600 western soldiers, about 40 percent of the armed forces.

"We decided they were deserters," a senior army officer said as he sat under a tree at a base outside Dili. He asked not be identified out of fear for his family's safety. "If there was discrimination, they should resolve it within the military institution and not jump and go straight to the president and foreign embassies. We felt so ashamed."

The dismissed soldiers and their supporters staged a second demonstration in late April that culminated in clashes outside the Palácio do Governo. The police fled, and the army was called in. By the end of the day, at least five from the dissident camp had been killed and rumors of a far larger number of killings swept the capital.

A day later, Maj. Alfredo Reinado, commander of the military police and a westerner, abandoned the army, heading to the hills with about 20 heavily armed soldiers. He said he broke ranks in order to maintain the professionalism of the military in the face of discrimination and politicking.

"It's like an old sickness and old virus that started years ago. This has become a tumor growing until now," he said, referring to the rivalries within the security forces. Speaking by telephone from his mountain redoubt, he criticized the former rebel fighters now heading the armed forces, saying, "The guerrilla leaders betrayed the country. They're supposed to defend the whole country, not just the easterners."

But even as he urged dialogue, Reinado himself provoked a dangerous escalation in violence a week ago when he led his dissident forces into an eastern suburb of Dili. The soldiers encountered regular army troops in the area, and the result was the fiercest gun battle yet.

A day later, army forces in central Dili attacked the national police headquarters with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, charging that the police had aligned themselves with the dissident troops. The besieged police officers appealed for help from U.N. officials, who negotiated a truce and surrender. But as U.N. police officers and advisers escorted the unarmed East Timorese police down the street from their headquarters, four soldiers opened fire, killing 10 local policemen.

The police force, terrified, disintegrated in Dili. The military, already fractured, was further discredited. Rival gangs of easterners and westerners, armed with machetes, swords and knives, took over the capital's streets. The government called for the intervention of an Australian-led force made up of 2,200 peacekeepers from four countries.

Sukehiro Hasegawa, the U.N. coordinator in East Timor, acknowledged that the unrest represented a significant setback to a U.N. undertaking that had been widely considered successful. Most gravely, he said, the violence has sundered the national unity that carried East Timor to independence.

"If the leaders of this country can come together and recognize the enormity of the problem, I think it will be temporary," Hasegawa said. "If the leaders cannot reconcile these differences, then it will become a long-term problem."

Back under the tree, the senior military officer bitterly distributed blame among the police, the dissident soldiers, the Timorese government and the United Nations.

"People say the only successful case for the U.N. is here in East Timor," he said, lowering his cigarette and flashing a sardonic smile. "You see how successful? People killing each other very successfully."