By Mark Riley

East Timor's leaders have demanded that the United Nations remove its district administrators and replace them with local leaders, in the first significant step towards achieving full control of the territory.

Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta asked UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to complete the move by August. His appeal comes amid welling discontent with the pace of rebuilding under the UN's transitional administration in Dili. "I told the Secretary-General there is a growing level of frustration and disillusionment with the UN in East Timor, particularly among the young," Mr Ramos Horta told The Age after the meeting. "But he knows there is still time for him to take decisive leadership action to correct the problems.

"If there is one place where the UN can be seen to succeed it is East Timor. There would simply be no reason, no justification, for the UN to fail."

The East Timorese leadership wants a higher level of involvement in the administration of the territory and sees the appointment of local district managers as a key way of achieving that end. "At the moment there is not one single East Timorese among the district administrators," Mr Ramos Horta said. "The Secretary-General has agreed that this is not acceptable and that East Timorese people should take over where possible."

The UN's head of district administration, Professor Jarat Chopra, left his post in March, complaining that senior UN officials were putting the territory's future second to their own careers. A fortnight ago, all 13 UN district administrators signed an angry letter in which they complained that autocratic decision-making by the same senior UN officials was threatening the development of democracy.

But Mr Ramos Horta said the greater problem was that many of the UN-appointed district commanders were under-qualified. "I know many of them have no experience, no expertise, no academic qualifications at all," he said, after delivering the keynote address to the annual peace awards at New York's Tanenbaum Centre. "I asked one of them - an American lady - what her qualifications were, and she said only that she had worked in Yosemite National Park."

Mr Ramos Horta said he told Mr Annan that many East Timorese were better qualified for the positions and that immediate steps should be taken to place them in the jobs. He had also asked Mr Annan to deliver by August a clear timetable for the territory's move to independence, so it could be considered at the general meeting of the National Council for Timorese Resistance.

The pair discussed the possibility of conducting the territory's first national elections as early as August next year, on the second anniversary of last year's independence ballot.

Mr Ramos Horta said the Secretary-General had given tacit support in their discussions for East Timor's Falintil independence fighters to be allowed to form the nucleus of the territory's first national army. "Initially, the UN was not favorable to us having our own national forces, but now it has realised that it is legitimate and fair that we do," Mr Ramos Horta said.

The East Timorese leader has already conducted a round of high-level discussions with Clinton administration officials and will speak to key diplomats and US foreign relations experts before leaving on Thursday.