UNICEF works to get children back to school in East Timor.

28 January - Returning children to school has been the primary focus of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in East Timor, the agency's head told correspondents at a press conference today in New York.

Having just returned from East Timor, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that children and youth were becoming idle there because they had nothing to do.

"Not all the schools are functioning at this point and there is very little employment," she said."It's one of the reasons there is concern about security from a perspective of some minor crime."

During her visit, the first by the head of a UN agency since East Timor's vote for independence, Ms. Bellamy inaugurated the reopening of a school in Manatuto and a child care centre for children and youth in Dili, both supported by UNICEF.

Although 100,000 children are believed to be back in school, about 90 per cent of the schools have been damaged and not all of them have been repaired, she said.

Ms. Bellamy also reviewed UNICEF activities and met with independence leader Xanana Gusmao, Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta and officials from the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET).

Since September 1999, UNICEF activities have also focused on a major immunization campaign for 45,000 children to avoid a measles epidemic.