Australia PM visits East Timor for crisis talks

By Tito Belo

DILI (Reuters) - Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a lightning visit to East Timor on Friday to pledge support after an assassination attempt on the country's president, Jose Ramos-Horta.

Rudd later flew to the northern Australia city of Darwin to visit Ramos-Horta, recovering in hospital there from double gunshot wounds.

Rudd shook hands with his East Timor counterpart Xanana Gusmao in Dili, before meeting senior United Nations and Australian military officials there.

"A bullet can wound a president but it never can penetrate the values of democracy," Gusmao told reporters after talks with Rudd amid heavy security in the capital, where international troops and police locked down streets.

"Our nation is a proud nation. We are ready to progress from volatility to stability, and from fear to confidence," Gusmao said.

Rudd, who sent 200 extra troops and police after Monday's double assault by rebel soldiers on Ramos-Horta's home and Gusmao's motorcade, said Australia would stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Asia's youngest nation.

"It's by the ballot box, and not by the barrel of a gun, that the decisions for our countries will be made," Rudd said.

Australia has 1,000 troops in East Timor, backing up 1,600 United Nations police.

Gusmao was unharmed in the attacks, but rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was killed in the gunfight at Ramos-Horta's house.

The man who claims to have taken command of rebel soldiers after Reinado's death, former army lieutenant Gastao Salsinha, told Reuters his supporters would fight if attacked by international forces.

East Timor's prosecutor-general has issued a warrant for his arrest.

"I still have several weapons and other army equipment, as well as... many supporters in the country. Alfredo's death will not stop us fighting, because his death is a lesson for us to defend justice," Salsinha told Reuters.

International security forces were sent to the resource-rich but still impoverished country in May 2006 after ethnic fighting and clashes between rival police and the military, which left more than 30 people dead and 150,000 living in refugee camps, from a population of around a million.

"HE'S A FIGHTER"

Rudd later flew to Royal Darwin Hospital, where Ramos-Horta was taken on life-support after he was shot by renegade soldiers led by Reinado.