By Heather Paterson

Dili (East Timor) - Lowering its flag over East Timor for a final time Wednesday, an Australian-led force left the recovering territory to the UN administrators who will guide it toward full independence. Maj. Gen. Peter Cosgrove presided over the ceremony outside his multinational force's Dili headquarters. He will officially relinquish control to the UN group later in the day.

When the 19-nation force was deployed in September, East Timor was in chaos, with buildings on fire and gunshots from anti-independence militias and maverick Indonesian troops echoing across the capital, Dili. Now, hundreds of thousands of East Timorese who were forced to flee the bloody mayhem are trying to rebuild their shattered lives and hope their homeland will be independent within a few years.

"This is one of the most complex, challenging and most successful military operations we have ever run," Cosgrove said Tuesday in a farewell speech to his troops. Cosgrove is scheduled to depart on an Australian navy ship, leaving the UN force under the command of Lt. Gen. Jaime de los Santos of the Philippines.

The multinational troops, known as Interfet, supervised the largely peaceful withdrawal of Indonesian soldiers from East Timor and had the territory under its control within seven weeks. Despite the massive destruction before they arrived, skirmishes with militias and Indonesian troops were few. The peacekeepers killed one Indonesian police officer and six militia men. Two soldiers died, one in a car accident and another from illness.

"I'm very relieved about the low cost in human terms with violence virtually stopping after our arrival, low cost in lives to Interfet and our adversaries," Cosgrove said. Indonesia's military is accused of helping the anti-independence militias launch the violence after East Timor's people overwhelmingly voted for independence from Indonesia in a UN-supervised ballot.

A state-appointed human rights report and a separate UN investigation have accused former military chief Gen. Wiranto of being ultimately responsible for the terror and destruction. President Abdurrahman Wahid dropped Wiranto as security minister last week over the allegations, and state prosecutors are considering whether to file charges against him and other senior Indonesian commanders. The four-star general had repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, head of a parliamentary commission that scrutinizes the military, said Wiranto will be summoned before parliament in early March to answer questions about the violence. "We want firsthand information from Wiranto himself," the legislator said.

The anti-independence militias are still active in Indonesian-controlled West Timor, where members stoned a UN team on Tuesday and disrupted the return of 1,000 refugees back to East Timor. No one was injured but only 179 people made it across the border, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

The UN peacekeepers are well-armed, with automatic weapons, and have authority to use them to defend themselves and carry out their jobs. It is anticipated that the troops deployed along the West Timor border would be more heavily armed to deal with militias than peacekeepers elsewhere in the territory, UN officials said.