DILI - One of East Timor's most senior political figures, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, quit the government on Sunday as a political crisis deepened.
"The minister has resigned," his aide, Chris Santos, told Reuters. "However, he will continue to occupy his portfolios until a new government is sworn in."
Ramos-Horta had been foreign minister since Timor's independence in 2002, but last month was also given the defence and interior portfolios after fighting broke out in the armed forces and spiralled into widespread violence in which 30 people were killed.
Widely blamed for the violence has been Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, whose Fretilin party met on Sunday amid speculation the leadership may dump him.
But a party spokesman later insisted said he would not step down and "correct constitutional procedures" must be followed.
Alkatiri's resignation has been the rallying cry during protests by thousands of Timorese that have peaked in the past five days after damaging revelations in an Australian news documentary linked him to a plot to arm a civilian militia.
The revelations prompted the tiny nation's hugely popular president, Xanana Gusmao, to threaten to quit, saying he was ashamed of the country's political leaders.
While he later pulled back, diplomats said bad blood between him and Alkatiri was now out in the open.
Alkatiri, re-elected Fretilin's leader in May by the party's 80-member central committee in a show of hands, is prime minister by virtue of their parliamentary majority.
Gusmao, who quit the party in the 1970s to concentrate on leading an insurgency against Indonesia's often brutal colonial rule, won the presidency by an overwhelming majority when the country became independent.
"Big Brother"
Jailed by Indonesia for his role in the armed struggle, Gusmao is popularly known as "big brother" by virtually all Timorese and is mobbed by supporters wherever he goes.
Alkatiri, on the other hand, is widely mistrusted, not just because he is a Muslim in a staunchly Roman Catholic country but also for his less-than-impressive liberation struggle credentials. He spent years in exile in Mozambique and Angola, and critics say he was influenced by their socialist policies.
He has not been seen in public for weeks, and always travels under tight security.
With unemployment running at about 70 percent in a nation of around 1 million, Alkatiri is accused of failing to use the country's revenues from oil and gas exploration rights in the Timor Sea to build a viable economy and create jobs.
He is also blamed for mishandling a dispute by around half of the 1,400-strong army that led to a split in the security forces and widespread violence and looting that only ended with the arrival of a 2,500-strong Australian-led intervention force.
The man most Western diplomats privately have said they would like as prime minister is Ramos-Horta -- who is also not a Fretilin member but enormously popular among ordinary Timorese.
A close friend of Gusmao, Ramos-Horta is seen as more likely to implement labour-intensive infrastructure projects and manage loans and aid with more transparency.
East Timor was a Portuguese colony for centuries before a revolution in Lisbon in 1975 gave the territory a brief taste of independence. Indonesian troops invaded a few days later and Jakarta annexed East Timor in 1976.
After a 1999 vote for independence marked by violence blamed largely on pro-Jakarta militia with ties to the Indonesian army, an international peacekeeping force moved into the territory, ushering in a transitional period of U.N. administration before East Timor became a fully-fledged nation in 2002.
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