FACTBOX: East Timor's political and economic ties

(Reuters) - Australian troops began arriving in East Timor on Tuesday to help enforce a state of emergency declared after a double assassination attempt that left the tiny nation's president in hospital with triple gunshot wounds.

Following are some key facts about East Timor and its regional, political and economic ties.

LOCATION: Made up of the eastern end of Timor island, the islands of Atauro and Jaco, and the enclave of Oecussi on the northern coast of Indonesia-ruled western side of the island, the country is slightly smaller than Hawaii. The capital Dili, is home to 170,000 people in the nation of 1 million, according to a 2004 census.

STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE: East Timor is of primary importance for neighbors Australia and Indonesia. The Timor Gap Treaty, signed in 1989 by Australian and Indonesia, secured joint exploration rights for potentially lucrative oil and gas reserves in the sea between East Timor and Australia. East Timor's state repository Petroleum Fund held assets of $1.8 billion as of September 2007, but to date exploration has not been exhaustive.

POST-INDEPENDENCE: Asia's youngest nation has been unable to achieve stability since a referendum in 1999, and full independence in 2002, ended 24 years of rule by Indonesia, and before that three and a half centuries of Portuguese colonization. Four years after independence hero Xanana Gusmao became the country's first president, East Timor plunged into crisis in 2006 as the army tore apart along regional lines. The resulting factional violence killed 37 people and drove 150,000 -- more than 10 percent of the population -- from their homes.

PEACEKEEPERS: Around 1,600 U.N. police, backed by 1,000 Australian soldiers are currently patrolling in Dili and other cities. Foreign troops brought in to calm tensions are unpopular with some East Timorese, but deemed a necessary presence by the government. Some Australian defense analysts suggest Canberra could not muster the same level of personnel as it did in 1999 (some 4,000 troops), if trouble escalates, as deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands have stretched capacity. New Zealand, which has contributed military personnel to Australia-led missions since 1999, currently has about 180 personnel in East Timor.

INTERNAL RISKS: The country's ethnically split east-west divide was a factor in unrest that flared in mid-2006. The violence disrupted the economy and created a vast pool of internally displaced people. Some 100,000 people of the 150,000 who fled their homes to escape the violence are still living in camps. About 50 percent of the working-age population are unemployed, and about 45 percent of the population were aged under 15 years in 2005. Food shortages are common in the countryside, according to U.N. assessments.

ECONOMY: East Timor is one of Asia's poorest nations. Around 70 percent of its infrastructure was destroyed in pre-independence fighting in 1999, with much yet to be restored. It received around $28 million in aid from donors in 2007. The U.S. ($5 million) and Australia ($4.6 million) together contributed about a third of the total aid, and the European Commission ($1.3 million and $2.5 million from its ECHO humanitarian fund) and Japan ($2 million) made the next largest specific contributions. Coffee is the predominantly agricultural country's main export crop, but it also exports marble. The U.S. dollar is the official currency.

Sources: Reuters, Reuters Alertnet, United Nations Relief Web (2006 Timor Leste Assessment: here Record of appeals and funding, here), New Zealand Defence Ministr y (here), CIA World FactBook (here) (Writing by Gillian Murdoch, Singapore Editorial Reference Unit, editing by Ed Davies and Sanjeev Miglani)