Elite Australian troops arrive in East Timor

Sydney - Up to 100 elite Australian troops have arrived in East Timor amid fears a tense stand-off between international forces and a wanted rebel leader could spark fresh violence, reports said Saturday.

Four Australian Defence Force aircraft transported the contingent of Special Air Service (SAS) troops to the capital, Dili, following a national security committee meeting in Canberra, Fairfax newspapers reported.

The crack troops touched down as Australia raised its security alert to the highest level for hundreds of its citizens in the country, and as Australian-led forces equipped with tanks and helicopters surrounded the hideout of rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado.

East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao has accused Reinado of stealing 25 firearms last Sunday from police posts on the border with Indonesia and gave the international force the green light to capture the rebel.

Australian and United Nations security officials in Dili fear the outbreak of widespread violence, possibly even civil war, if Australian soldiers kill or injure the rebel leader.

Reinado, the Australian-trained former head of East Timor's military police, warned that if anything happened to him "people will rise up in their thousands," the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

"People will start killing each other if anything happens to me," he said via telephone from Same, 50 kilometres south of the capital, Dili, where he and around 150 heavily-armed supporters are holed up.

Brigadier Mal Rerden, Commander of the Australian troops in East Timor, insisted the latest deployment was just part of a normal rotation to replace troops going home.

"We're just at the start of a normal rotation period," he told Sky News, denying Australia was swelling the ranks of its 800-strong military presence, along with 120 New Zealand troops.

"You need to have time to bring in the new people and get them worked up before we take the old people out -- so we're in the process of doing that right now."

Reinado was jailed over his role in the unrest that led to an Australian-led International Stabilisation Force (ISF) being called in last year, but escaped in a mass breakout from a Dili prison in August.

The rebel leader backed down from vowing to fight to his death as the standoff developed last week, but on Friday he refused to negotiate with a senior government official by telephone, demanding face-to-face talks.

Reinado led a band of breakaway soldiers last April and May when battles between security factions degenerated into rampant gang violence.

Around 37 people were killed and more than 150,000 fled their homes. The government then asked for international help and Australian-led peacekeepers were dispatched.

In recent weeks there has been sporadic outbreaks of turmoil with two men hacked to death in late January and Australian soldiers shooting dead two youths who allegedly opened fire on them with steel arrows.

Agence France Presse