The United Nations may begin to cut its 8,000-member peacekeeping force in East Timor even before the former Indonesian province becomes independent next year, the territory's UN administrator said Monday. But East Timor will still need significant assistance from the world body after independence, U.N. administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos Horta, the foreign affairs minister in East Timor's transitional government, told the Security Council.

In the next step toward independence, East Timorese vote Aug. 30 on a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Ramos Horta said presidential elections will take place after the constitution is adopted, and independence will follow early next year.

The former Portuguese colony voted on Aug. 30, 1999 to break its ties with Indonesia and is being administered by the United Nations in its transition to independence. The peacekeeping force was sent in after Indonesian troops and their militia supporters killed hundreds and destroyed much of East Timor after the independence vote. In a report to the council last week, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said a substantial international presence would be needed after independence — including a peacekeeping force, because of threats from pro-Indonesian militias.

But Annan said it was possible to reduce the number of peacekeeper infantry battalions in the east and central regions if the security situation remains stable.

Vieira de Mello went a step further. ``Should the current stable conditions continue in East Timor through the election period and the formation of the constituent assembly,'' he said, ``I see no reason, at this stage, why that process could not commence — cautiously — prior to independence.''

Indonesian Ambassador Makmur Widodo denied claims in Annan's report that has not acted against militia groups in West Timor, which it controls. ``Nothing could be farther from the truth,'' he said, insisting that the militias have been disbanded and disarmed. Both Vieira de Mello and Ramos Horta warned against too quick a U.N. withdrawal.

``Because peace is still fragile ... any consideration of hasty withdrawal soon after independence would undermine what has been achieved with so much cost in terms of financial resources, in terms of lives,'' Ramos Horta said. The end of the U.N. mission is ``in sight,'' Vieira de Mello said, ``but it would be wrong to disengage from this activity prematurely.''

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