E. Timor Guerillas Made Into Formal Army

A I L E U, East Timor, Feb. 1 -- After resisting Indonesia's military occupation for 24 years, East Timor's scrappy guerrilla force has been transformed into the core of a new national army.

In an emotional ceremony, the former rebels lowered their guerrilla flag and replaced it with the blue-and-white banner of the United Nations, which will oversee their transition.

"We will become the East Timor Defense Force, but the seed from which this new force was germinated is Falintil," former rebel commander Taur Matan Ruak told 1,700 soldiers at the mountain town of Aileu, about 30 miles south of the capital Dili.

Defending East Timor Against West Timor

Falintil is the Portuguese acronym for the East Timor National Liberation Armed Forces, formed in the wake of the 1974 collapse of Portugal's colonial empire. Former colonial soldiers flocked into the force, which fought Indonesia during its 1975 invasion of thehalf-island territory.

The insurgents later withdrew into East Timor's rugged interior where, outnumbered and outgunned, they used knowledge of the land and the near-universal support of the population to survive repeated offensives by Indonesia's U.S.-trained special forces, theKopassus.

In August, 1999, a U.N.-sponsored referendum ended Indonesian rule. The independence vote sparked massive violence by militias backed by the Indonesian army, ending only with the arrival of international peacekeepers.

East Timor is currently under U.N. administration during its transition to independence. Almost 8,000 U.N. troops are keeping peace in the region.

With elements of the Indonesian army still unreconciled to the loss of the territory, the new defense force may soon be called to prevent armed incursions from neighboring West Timor, still an Indonesian territory.

Ceremony by Man Expected to Be President

The ceremony in Aileu opened with a mass held by Nobel peace laureate Bishop Carlos Belo. As soldiers and dignitaries laid wreaths at a memorial to the dead, many wept openly.