Phones and Internet services in government offices were disconnected last Saturday as computers were trundled out. The phone contracts had been paid for by the now non-existent UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). They should have been renewed by the incoming East Timorese Government, but someone forgot to ensure continuity.

At the national radio and television station that has flourished under UNTAET tutelage since 1999 there is a worse crisis: broadcasts could cease any day. If the radio goes off the air the rural population will be isolated, because Radio Timor Lorosae, formerly Radio UNTAET, is the only news medium that reaches the countryside.

Foreign donors have invested heavily in training young East Timorese journalists, and now 26 face unemployment, along with technical workers. As the crisis developed the Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, visited the station to reassure staff they would stay on air. Not all were convinced.

"Who do we hand power to?" a departing UNTAET staffer asked. "We have no counterpart in place."

UNTAET officials had repeatedly warned of this danger if the transition was not prepared, but the problem is larger. International donors believe the country's Constitution gives insufficient guarantees of press freedom, and have withheld backing.

"Alkatiri thought the regulation on public broadcasting would satisfy the donors," a UN source said. "But he underestimated the benchmark they require for media independence."

A compromise is being hammered out - an emergency $A620,000 bale-out package from a few donors to allow broadcasting to continue for several months more.

East Timorese are worried about surviving alone, but the UN is not pulling out altogether: UNTAET has been replaced by the UN Mission of Support in East Timor, led by an Indian diplomat, Kamalesh Sharma, with a new support team of international experts.

There are two great sources of anxiety. One stems from the knowledge that the appearance of Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri at the independence ceremonies did not indicate that problems with Jakarta had ended. Invited personally by President Xanana Gusmao, she came despite opposition from some military circles.

Despite UN promises, not a single Indonesian officer has been convicted for the war crimes of 1999, and in Dili this impunity is sorely felt.

About 50,000 people deported to West Timor at that time remain there. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued a statement soon before independence saying it would no longer provide repatriation assistance, but later said it would extend the deadline by six months.

UN peacekeepers remain at the West Timor border, which is quiet, but a decision this week by the Indonesian Army command to move its regional military base from Bali to West Timor is not reassuring.

"At present East Timor and Australia have yet to become a threat, but in the future things may be different," West Timor's Deputy Governor, Johannes Pake Pani, told The Jakarta Post.

The other great worry is unemployment. Several thousand people have been recruited for the new public service, but the emptying of hotels and restaurants will cut jobs in the service sector.

Nina Sane, 19, and her fiance, Januario Tilman, 25, are a typical young couple facing the future. They have opened a streetside kiosk about three metres square, in which Mr Tilman lives. He also drives a taxi part-time. Ms Sane shares a shack opposite with her mother, a sort of urban swineherd whose pigs have the run of the compound.

When not selling groceries, Ms Sane studies Portuguese, which has been made the official language - to the anger of many Indonesian-speaking young.

They are dirt poor, but they have an irrepressible spirit, and form part of the human capital that is East Timor's greatest asset as it rises from the ashes.