Progress on deploying an Australian- led multinational force in East Timor picked up steam at the United Nations Monday, with high-level talks kicking off here following Indonesia’s acceptance of the force.

One day after Indonesian President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie invited UN-authorised troops from “friendly nations” to enter East Timor and conceded that “we cannot wait any longer,” several officials arrived at New York to discuss the force.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas met UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to outline Jakarta’s views on the force, but Alatas insisted that Indonesia would not place any conditions that would hinder the peace-keepers’ work.

“Indonesia would like to see security cooperation and the sending of an international force to materialise as soon as possible,” Alatas said. “We have made no conditions on the composition (of the force)… We did not come here to prevent any country from participating.”

The foreign minister’s words, however, came shortly after several Indonesian military officials objected to Australia’s proposed leadership of the force, as well as plans by Portugal, the United States and New Zealand to participate.

On Monday, Indonesian protesters attacked Australia’s consulate in the city of Surabaya, although Alatas said that, in general, “Indonesia and Australia have good, constructive relations.”

UN officials said after Annan’s meeting with Alatas that the plans to send the force should be finalised within the next day or two. Sources here expected the UN Security Council to approve a force by Wednesday and for troops to start entering East Timor before the end of the week.

Annan praised Habibie for what he called the “difficult decision” to allow international troops into East Timor, and said that he hoped the details for the force can be quickly finalised so that “the uncertainty and the suffering of the East Timorese people will not be prolonged.”

Also arriving in New York was Australian Foreign Minister Alaexander Downer, whose country has pledged to deploy 4,500 troops in East Timor.

Australia has committed itself to leading the force, which is expected to include troops from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, France and Sweden. The United States has said it will lend transport and logistical support.

Australian officials contended that at least 2,000 of their troops could be deployed urgently, possibly within a few days if Council approval is forthcoming.

According to officials here, the UN Security Council is poised to accept the force quickly, with countries that had previously insisted on allowing Indonesian troops to calm the violence in East Timor – notably the United States and China – now supporting the multinational intervention.

The 15-nation Council is expected to provide the force with the authority, under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, to use military means to defend itself and to provide security for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Timorese.

Yet it is also expected to coordinate its activities with the Indonesian troops, who Jakarta said would remain in East Timor for the next few weeks – despite reports that some troops assisted pro-Indonesia militias in the recent wave of violent attacks.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said that Habibie had asked the outside troops to “assist” the Indonesian forces, which imposed martial law on East Timor last week.

Yet some groups, including the US-based East Timor Action Network (ETAN), argued Indonesia could not be trusted – following attacks in which as many as 7,000 East Timorese are believed dead – to remain in the territory.

“ETAN…calls on the Indonesian government to withdraw its troops voluntarily from East Timor immediately and allow the UN to take over,” the group said in a statement Sunday.

“It is not yet too late for the Indonesian government to claim some historical victory by allowing the resumption of a peaceful transition for East Timor to independence,” ETAN added.

Indonesia has occupied East Timor since 1975, but on May 5 agreed, in a UN-brokered accord with Portugal, to allow a vote for East Timorese either to accept autonomy under Indonesian rule or to opt for independence.

On Aug. 30, 78.5 percent of nearly 450,000 East Timorese voters chose independence, but pro-Indonesia militias and their allies in the Indonesian military kicked off a wave of killings, in which some 300,000 people were forced to flee their homes.

Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, accused Indonesia of participating in the “well-planned and systematic policy of killings, displacement, destruction of property and intimidation.”

After meeting Habibie in Jakarta Monday, she called for an independent commission of inquiry to examine “grave violations” committed in East Timor.

Eckhard said the situation had calmed down in recent days, but added that a humanitarian crisis was looming for East Timor. Thousands of Timorese refugees urgently needed food and medicine, he said, while half the homes in East Timor’s capital, Dili, had been burned to the ground.

Roughly 200,000 Timorese were living in open areas around East Timor, including Dare and several towns southeast of the city of Baucau, where sources said that many had been without food for days, or had been living by eating roots.

Constancio Pinto, UN representative of the National Council of Timorese Resistance, said 50,000 people were at risk of starvation.

Conditions were reported to be particularly bad for more than 80,000 East Timorese who had fled in recent days to West Timor – the western half of the island of Timor, which had always been under Indonesian rule. UN access to the East Timorese refugees has been severely restricted by militias and Indonesian security forces, officials here said.

“Any camp under the control of the Indonesian armed forces cannot offer reliable protection right now to people fleeing East Timor,” said Sidney Jones, executive director of Human Rights Watch/Asia. “International agencies have to be allowed in immediately, to protect the displaced.”

Eckhard said that hundreds of UN personnel, who had been evacuated to Darwin, Australia, when the violence increased, would return to East Timor once the multinational troops restored security there.

On Monday, Annan also appointed Ross Mountain the UN assistant emergency relief coordinator, to take charge of the humanitarian reponse to the East Timor crisis. Mountain will assess humanitarian needs in both East and West Timor and prepare contingency plans to deliver emergency assistance, officials said.