DILI, East Timor -- Embracing each other, both candidates in East Timor's first presidential poll cast their votes on Sunday in the last milestone before the territory is declared formally independent next month.

East Timorese began making their way along potholed roads to the polls which opened just after dawn for the two-man contest between independence hero Xanana Gusmao and the less charismatic Francisco Xavier do Amaral.

"I'm really happy to come here, I want to vote for a president who will make my country a better place," Angelina Saldanha, 28, said before casting her vote at the Santo Paulus school in the seaside capital Dili.

Gusmao, whose popularity extends across East Timor, is expected to crush his less charismatic, ageing rival amaral in the race for the largely symbolic presidential post.

The former guerrilla leader, in an open-necked shirt, appeared much more relaxed than Amaral as they walked arm in arm to cast their votes at the school.

Greeted with smiles from onlookers, including a group of curious nuns on their way to mass in this staunchly Roman Catholic country, both men turned to the small crowd and showed their fingers blackened with ink to show they'd voted.

Several voters, decked out in their Sunday best before leaving for church, were seen lining up to vote in the capital's polling stations although officials said religious service had so far kept the crowds away.

But they added all was going smoothly in the several hundred polling stations set up to deal with around 430,000 eligible voters.

--- "After Mass" ---

"The churches are absolutely crowded so after mass we will expect people to come," Jorge Guzman, an official from the independent electoral commission told Reuters.

"Everything is going well so far and everything out in the districts is going well," he added.

The United Nations, which has run the territory since a bloody independence vote to break from Indonesian rule in August 1999, said it expected a huge turnout.

"I am sure that all the Timorese who have acquired the right to vote...will turn out," the UN chief in the territory, Sergio Vieira de Mello, told reporters on the eve of the election.