Sydney (dpa) – East Timor's peaceful presidential election hastens the day Australia will withdraw its troops from the tiny half-island nation on its doorstep, Defense Minister Stephen Smith said Monday. The weekend's first round of balloting eliminated incumbent Jose Ramos-Horta and set up a run-off contest next month between Fretilin Party candidate Francisco Guterres and Taur Matan Ruak, the former armed forces commander being backed by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's CNRT-led coalition. “We look forward to the next two stages going well,” Smith said. “Then, that puts us in a good position to commence discussions with the United Nations, with East Timor, with New Zealand about a drawdown of our stabilization force.” Australia and New Zealand have 460 soldiers in East Timor. They were invited to help keep peace after civil unrest in 2006. “If there are successful well-held, well-conducted elections, we can do the intense planning in the course of this year with the drawdown to occur next year,” Smith said. Ramos-Horta, 62, who was elected in 2007, conceded defeat but has not indicated whom he would advise his supporters to back in the run-off. Preliminary results from Saturday's poll give Guterres 28 per cent of the vote, Ruak 25 per cent and Ramos-Horta 17 per cent. Guterres, 57, who had the most votes in the first-round election in 2007, lost to Ramos-Horta in the run-off. East Timor, an Indonesian province for 24 years before a 1999 referendum flagged a future as an independent nation, shares Timor island with Indonesia's West Timor province. In the 400 years before Indonesian troops invaded in 1975, it was a Portuguese colony. Portuguese is an official language and most of its 1.1 million people are Roman Catholics. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/4loh3 Tags: Australia, East Timor, Election, Vote Section: Latest News, Oceana, Southeast Asia
