Hope Comes to East Timor.

• Position: United Nations peacekeeping force arrives in East Timor - Brief Article

For the second time this year, American troops have been sent to a faraway land with the mission of using guns to bring peace.

While 6,300 American soldiers remain in the Serbian province of Kosovo, 200 more have been sent to help quell violence in the tiny island territory of East Timor, a half a world away (see map, page 14).

When they arrived on September 20 as part of a 7,500-troop United Nations force, the streets were so silent the banana trees could be heard rustling in the tropical breeze. The towns lay in gutted ruins, the stench of burned-out buildings filled the air, and most of the people had fled.

East Timor had erupted in violence after an August vote for independence from Indonesia, which has occupied the island since it gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975. At that time, Indonesia invaded and brutally crushed the independence movement, killing 200,000 people, nearly a third of the population.

This year, a new Indonesian...