DILI (AFP) -- Independence hero Xanana Gusmao Wednesday pledged to unite strife-wracked East Timor as he was sworn in as prime minister at a ceremony boycotted by the former ruling party Fretilin.

The former guerrilla leader and his new government were sworn in to lead the tiny nation which has suffered more than a year of tensions and political uncertainty in the wake of deadly unrest in the capital Dili.
“I swear to God, to the people, and on my honor, that I will fulfil with loyalty the functions that have been invested in me,” Gusmao said in Portuguese, as President Jose Ramos-Horta administered his oath.
“I will abide by and enforce the constitution and the laws, and will dedicate all my energy to the defense and consolidation of independence and national unity,” he said during the ceremony at the presidential palace.
Portugal’s feared national guards patrolled outside the ceremony, which was attended by lawmakers, diplomats, senior clergy in the mainly Catholic nation, and the UN’s top official in East Timor, Atul Khare.
The swearing-in followed Ramos-Horta on Monday inviting a coalition formed by Gusmao in the wake of June 30’s inconclusive polls to form a government. The group holds 37 seats in the 65-seat parliament.
Fretilin, which as an individual party won the most votes in the elections but not the absolute majority required to govern, insists that it should have been asked to lead and plans to fight the decision in the courts.
Ramos-Horta’s announcement triggered sporadic low-level violence across Dili and several other towns in the half-island nation. Angry youths hurled rocks, set up road blockades and torched buildings in the capital and two other towns.
Nearly 3,000 international peacekeepers and UN police have largely controlled the unrest and Mari Alkatiri, who stepped down as Fretilin’s prime minister following last year’s unrest, promised Tuesday to ask his supporters to quell their violence.
The international forces were deployed here after clashes between military and police factions as well as youth gangs in April and May last year. At least 37 people were killed and some 150,000 people forced from their homes.
An estimated 100,000 people, or about 10 percent of the population, are still sheltering in refugee camps, too afraid to return or with no homes to go back to.
The crisis is just one of the many problems facing Gusmao’s new government, with unemployment hovering at near 50 percent, thousands of disaffected youth threatening social stability and languishing health and education systems.
East Timor voted for independence in a UN-backed referendum in 1999 and became the world’s newest nation in 2002. The former Fretilin government was criticized for spending too little on infrastructure and programs to pull the oil and gas rich nation out of its desperate poverty.
Alkatiri has said his party will sit in opposition while it fights Ramos-Horta’s ruling in court.
East Timor’s constitution is ambiguous on who should rule following the scenario in the wake of the polls, but gives Ramos-Horta the authority to choose