Governor-General visits East Timor

Governor-General Quentin Bryce arrived in East Timor on Sunday for her first
official visit to the fledgling nation.
Ms Bryce and her husband, Michael Bryce, were given a ceremonial welcome on the
tarmac at Dili International Airport.
Later on Sunday they will tour Australian defence facilities before dining with
troops at the Heliport base.
There are about 750 Australian troops stationed in the oil-rich country, although
the number will be reduced to 650 personnel by early next year because of the
improved security situation.
Australian peacekeepers first arrived in East Timor in 1999.
Some 1,400 people were killed and thousands injured or displaced when pro-Indonesian
militias, backed and supported by Jakarta, rampaged across East Timor to disrupt an
independence referendum.
Ms Bryce - who made history when she became Australia's first female head of state
in September - will spend three days touring the tiny nation, which is one of Asia's
poorest and smallest countries.
On Monday, she will meet with East Timor's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and
President Jose Ramos-Horta, who is the second democratically elected president since
independence in 2002.
He was shot in February in an assassination attempt led by rebels which he narrowly
survived.
Ms Bryce will also visit the national parliament and deliver a number of speeches,
including one with the prime minister's wife Australian-born Kirsty Sword-Gusmao at
a lunch for senior East Timorese women.