UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday he will send a team to East Timor to prepare for the return of United Nations peacekeepers, but warned that a new mission would need at least another six months to set up in the troubled country.

Displaced East Timorese children queue to get immunization at a refugee camp in Dili, East Timor, Tuesday, June 13, 2006. [AP]

Annan also bluntly suggested that the Security Council had scaled down the previous UN peacekeeping mission in East Timor too quickly. That, he said, was partly responsible for new violence that has roiled the country again and killed more than 30 people in the last month.

"The sad events of recent weeks reflect shortcomings not only on the part of the Timorese leadership but also on the part of the international community in inadequately sustaining Timor-Leste's (East Timor's) nation-building process," Annan told the Security Council.

In the last month, East Timor has suffered the worst wave of violence since its bloody break from Indonesian rule seven years ago. That came after the UN cut its mission in the tiny country over the last four years to a skeleton staff ¡ª which itself had been preparing to withdraw in May.

East Timor's ambassador to the UN Jose Luis Guterres, told the council that the United Nations must establish a new mission with a police force to replace the peacekeepers sent by Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Malaysia that were sent in to quell the latest violence.

"The current force and its successor, as indeed other components of a new UN mission, should also comprise a greater number of countries in the region," Guterres said. He mentioned Fiji, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea.

Guterres said the emergency is "nearing an end," but security remains edgy and "the country is in a politically precarious state." He spoke on behalf of Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta, who could not attend because of the unrest.

The demands for new UN peacekeepers in East Timor got strong support from members of the Security Council, including the United States. Washington had led calls earlier this year to shutter the East Timor mission, saying that the country was on the road to stability.

Annan's envoy for East Timor, Ian Martin, said that after visiting East Timor he believed the UN peacekeepers must primarily handle police work.

He and several nations also demanded that the United Nations oversee elections scheduled for 2007.

"Timor-Leste is a child of the United Nations. So it needs the universality and impartiality of the United Nations, which must once again take a leading role," Portugal's Ambassador Joao Salgueiro said.

Martin will lead the assessment team that will help determine the size of a potential UN force for East Timor.

Annan also said he would ask his high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, to set up a commission to look into some of the worst violence of recent weeks, as East Timor has demanded.ast Timor's latest unrest began in March when some 600 striking soldiers were dismissed, triggering clashes with loyalist forces.

The fighting gave way to gang warfare, and also widened political tensions between the politically powerful Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and President Xanana Gusmao, who is popular but holds a largely ceremonial role.

In East Timor's capital, Dili, critics of Alkatiri met Tuesday to discuss amending the constitution to give the president power to dissolve parliament and force Alkatiri to resign, said Manuel Tilman, an opposition legislator attending the talks.

"We have our government, our president, but nothing functions," Tilman said. "We think provisionally suspending part of our constitution and giving the president legislative and executive powers would give him the legitimacy to restore balance to the country."