By Peter Cole-Adams

Australia now has more than 5,000 combat-ready troops to draw on if the United Nations decides to set up an armed peacekeeping force in East Timor. The troops, based in Darwin and Townsville, are backed by hundreds of armoured vehicles, artillery and helicopters. With East Timor now in the final, tense days before next Monday's ballot, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, will meet the United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Mr Stanley Roth, today to discuss the present security situation and future contingencies.

Meanwhile, Labor's Foreign Affairs spokesman, Mr Laurie Brereton, said yesterday that he had been told by the Indonesian Embassy he could visit East Timor as part of a 10-person Australian delegation, accredited by the UN, to observe the ballot. Led by the former deputy prime minister, Mr Tim Fischer, the delegation will fly to Dili tomorrow and return a week later. Jakarta had refused Mr Brereton permission to visit the territory on four previous occasions since 1997. Government sources said Mr Downer had asked his Indonesian counterpart, Mr Ali Alatas, to approve Mr Brereton's inclusion when they met in Singapore recently. Under an agreement signed in May, Jakarta is to retain responsibility for security in East Timor until the ballot result is approved by the Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) later this year. However, pressure for early UN military intervention, either to restore order or mount an evacuation exercise, will mount if violence erupts before or straight after the ballot.

The Australian Defence Force now has two brigades on 28-day notice. Elements of both could be called on if Australia was required to contribute to a UN force. The 3rd Brigade, based in Townsville, has just over 3,000 troops divided between two infantry combat battalions of about 700 soldiers each, a cavalry regiment with armoured personnel carriers, a field artillery regiment, combat engineers, a signals squadron, an aviation reconnaissance squadron with Kiowa helicopters, a transport squadron and other support units. The newly upgraded, heavily mechanised Ist Brigade has 2,100 men and women in Darwin. It comprises an armoured regiment (53 Leopard tanks), a cavalry regiment with armoured personnel carriers, a mechanised infantry battalion equipped with wheeled, light-armoured vehicles, and eight Kiowa helicopters. In all it has 325 armoured vehicles. Also attached to the Darwin force, but still in Sydney, are an artillery regiment and a parachute regiment, bringing its total strength to nearly 2,600.

With two amphibious landing vessels HMAS Manoora and HMAS Kanimbla still undergoing modifications, Australian troops would be dependant for transport to East Timor on 24 Hercules aircraft and the fast but vulnerable catamaran, HMAS Jervis Bay, which can carry up to 500 fully equipped troops and some vehicles, but not tanks.