Australia PM visits East Timor for crisis talks

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He later flew to the northern Australian city of Darwin to visit President Jose Ramos-Horta, who is recovering in hospital from double gunshot wounds.

Rudd shook hands with his East Timor counterpart Xanana Gusmao, before meeting senior United Nations and Australian military officials in Dili.

"A bullet can wound a president but it never can penetrate the values of democracy," Gusmao told reporters after talks with Rudd amid heavy security in the capital, where international troops and police locked down streets.

"Our nation is a proud nation. We are ready to progress from volatility to stability, and from fear to confidence," Gusmao said.

Rudd, who sent 200 extra troops and police after Monday's double assault by rebel soldiers on Ramos-Horta's home and Gusmao's motorcade, said Australia would stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Asia's youngest nation.

Gusmao was unharmed in the attack.

"It's by the ballot box, and not by the barrel of a gun, that the decisions for our countries will be made," Rudd said. Australia has 1,000 troops in East Timor, backing up 1,600 United Nations police.

International security forces were sent to the resource-rich but still-impoverished country in May 2006 after ethnic fighting and clashes between rival police and the military, which left more than 30 people dead and 150,000 living in refugee camps.

Rudd later flew to Royal Darwin Hospital, where Ramos-Horta was taken on life-support after he was shot by renegade soldiers led by Alfredo Reinado.

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