UN, pro-independence group to form E Timor coalition

Lisbon (AFP), June 7 - East Timor will be run from July by a coalition government made up of the UN-run transitional administration for the territory and its main pro-independence group, the UN administrator said Wednesday.

"I hope that from July we will be able to put in place if not all, at least some parts of a plan to speed up the 'Timorisation' of the territory," Sergio Vieira de Mello told the Portuguese agency Lusa.

He said he had received backing from the pro-independence National Resistance Council for East Timor (CNRT), led by Xanana Gusmao, for his proposal to share government posts with the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) during the development of full independence for the territory, which is expected to take two to three years.

The Indonesian parliament last month ratified East Timor's August 30 independence vote, formally surrendering its claim to the former Portuguese colony which it invaded in 1975 and formally annexed the following year.

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