E. Timor Voters Choose Independence, U.N. Says : Asia: Indonesia, bracing for violence from militias opposing results, prepares to evacuate civil servants.

The people of violence-torn East Timor have overwhelmingly voted to end 24 years of Indonesian rule and become an independent state, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday.

The announcement, made simultaneously in Indonesia and at U.N. headquarters in New York, said 78.5% of the province’s voters had opted for independence rather than autonomy within Indonesia in the U.N.-sponsored referendum held Monday under largely peaceful conditions.

“After 24 years of conflict, East Timor now stands on the threshold of what we all hope will be a process of orderly and peaceful transition toward independence,” Annan said Friday. “The coming days, however, will require patience and calm. . . . I hardly need stress how important it is for [the province’s] leaders to exercise wisdom and reason.”

Annan told a session of the Security Council in New York that he was asking all parties “to bring to an end the violence,” and he called on Indonesia to maintain law and order in East Timor.

The measure requires the approval of the Indonesian parliament, which will take up the issue in October or November. Most Western diplomats have said they expect the parliament to accept the measure.

Although the vote will head this impoverished province on the road to freedom after centuries of Portuguese colonialism and decades of Indonesian domination, it was unclear whether the results will be accepted by militants who waged a campaign of terror against independence supporters and accused the United Nations of rigging the vote.

Jose Abilio Soares, the Indonesian-appointed governor of East Timor, said on Indonesian television Friday before Annan’s announcement that the pro-autonomy camp he backs rejected the election, which had been expected to favor independence.

“We will reject the vote if we lose it,” he said. “We are ready to face the consequences.”

After Annan’s announcement, President B.J. Habibie pledged that Indonesia would “honor and accept” the people’s decision. There was little other official reaction, and Dili remained tense this morning, with shops closed and most streets deserted.

Independence leader Jose Alexandre “Xanana” Gusmao called for the immediate dispatch of an international peacekeeping force to East Timor. In a statement read by a relative after the results were made public, Gusmao said: “We foresee chaos. We foresee a new genocide in East Timor.”

Gusmao, who was sentenced to a 20-year prison term after being captured in 1992, is expected to be freed by the government this month. Since February, he has been living in a bungalow under house arrest, but the government returned him to prison today for security reasons, saying there had been a threat on his life.

Western diplomats said they did not know what anti-independence militias--which terrorized the province before and after a relatively calm election--hope to achieve, besides more bloodshed, if they continue their violence. With 70 nations represented in the U.N. mission overseeing the election, the international community is certain to recognize the legitimacy of Monday’s vote and to pressure the Indonesian government to create the secure conditions needed to carry out the electorate’s decision.

Defying death threats and months of intimidation by anti-independence militias, more than 98% of the territory’s 438,000 voters showed up at the polls.

The Indonesian government said Friday that it was prepared to evacuate 20,000 civil servants from East Timor if the announcement of the results sparked renewed civil war, as some have feared. Ships and planes were on standby for a rescue mission.

With anti-independence militias rampaging at will through East Timor in the days and hours leading up to Annan’s announcement, Indonesians and foreigners already have fled the violence-torn former Portuguese colony.

“They are burning everything. They don’t respect anything. They are out of control. They are crazy,” one U.N. worker said after evacuating the town of Maliana along with the rest of a 54-member U.N. team.

“Indonesian police are doing nothing to stop the violence,” said American David Pearce, another U.N. worker who fled the town 33 miles southwest of Dili, the provincial capital of East Timor. In addition to Maliana, anti-independence militants are also holding the town of Liquisa.

Kris Janowksi, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Friday in Geneva that the U.N. expected as many as 100,000 of the province’s 800,000 people to flee in advance of independence.

At least 12,000 East Timorese already have fled to the neighboring province of West Timor.

U.N. officials expressed concern over the violence. At least four U.N. workers have been slain since Monday’s vote, and another six are missing.

“The security situation has to be brought under control,” said Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for Annan. “We think Indonesia is capable of doing that. We continue to appeal to them . . . to clamp down on these renegade elements running around with machetes and weapons.”

Eckhard said discussions were taking place in the corridors of U.N. headquarters and among various nations about the possibility of forming a peacekeeping force. Such an impromptu force could move quickly and avoid a long debate in the Security Council that might accompany efforts to set up a formal U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Eckhard stressed, however, that ad hoc contingents of peacekeepers would require an “invitation” from Indonesia and Portugal so “as to not get into a paralyzing council debate over forceful intervention.”

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command said the ammunition supply ship Kilauea was standing by for any emergency evacuation. Britain announced Friday that it may divert a destroyer, the Glasgow, from the South China Sea to East Timor.

With security on the ground continuing to deteriorate, the Indonesian military on Friday flew an additional 1,400 elite soldiers to Dili. Gen. Wiranto, Indonesia’s defense minister, said the troops would support police in restoring order. Indonesia already has about 18,000 soldiers and 8,000 police officers in the territory.

But the arrival of the additional troops did nothing to calm the fears of most Timorese. Throughout two decades of domination, Indonesia has used its army to repress the province’s Timorese majority. Western diplomats saw no reason to believe that there had been any change in the attitude of the military, which does not want to surrender the province it shed blood to conquer in 1975. Generals also have gotten rich plundering the province’s teak and sandalwood forests.

To make its point, the army has recruited, trained, paid and supported the thuggish anti-independence militias that have terrorized East Timor for nine months. The military and police forces generally have been unwilling to protect unarmed civilians under attack and have given the militias a free hand in hunting down independence supporters.

Publicly at least, despite its condemnation of the violence, the U.N. and the Western community have accepted Indonesia’s argument that the situation is under control and its forces are capable of providing security. The militias have killed as many as 1,000 people since January and sent tens of thousands of terrorized Timorese into the mountains and church compounds.

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Times staff writer John J. Goldman at the United Nations and Associated Press contributed to this report.