East Timor

   East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta was seriously hurt in Monday's shooting, and is being treated in Australia. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who narrowly escaped injury when gunmen ambushed his car, Canberra deployed an additional 350 peace keepers to Dili in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

East Timor road to independence - achieved on 20 May 2002 - was long and traumatic, it suffered some of the worst atrocities of modern times, at least 100,000 Timoreses died as a result of Indonesia's 25 year occupation, which ended in 1999. Indonesia invaded shortly after Portugal end the colonial rule, This tiny half-island, the other half belongs to Indonesia,has no industry to speak of, and hardly anything to sell abroad with annual income of $431 per head, most of its 800,000 people depend for a living on subsistence farming and fishing, since 1999, East Timor main source of revenue has been international aid.