DILL East Timor, Aug 7: Close to 450.000 people have registered to take part in the landmark vote on East Timor's future on August 30, a United Nations official said Saturday, reports AFP.

"Preliminary figures show that 433,576 individuals registered within East Timor and 12,680 outside, bringing the total to 446,256 registrants." the chief electoral officer of the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), Jeff Fischer, said. ■

The voters were registered between July 16 and August 6 in 200 UNAMET centres across the territory and several others in selected towns In Indonesia and abroad where large exiled East

Timorese communities exist.

East Timorese will vote whether to accept an offer of autonomy within Indonesia, which invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975, and annexed it a year later.

Jakarta has said it may give the territory independence if the autonomy offer is rejected.

Fischer said a total of 913 registration applications had been refused. 13 of which were at registration stations abroad.

Indonesia and Portugal, in an agreement at the United Nations in New York on May 5. agreed to allow the United Nations to conduct a "popular consultation" in East Timor.