One year after elections, and 12 years after the riots that followed a crucial referendum, the central debate in East Timor is how best to maintain a still-fragile peace.<br /><br />Armed groups were responsible for massacres in the wake of that vote for independence from neighbouring Indonesia in 1999 that claimed 1,500 lives and forced more than 250,000 - one-fourth of East Timor's population - to flee the country.<br /><br />Many of the men held responsible for the violence - former members of the pro-Indonesian militias - are still living in camps with their families in West Timor, in Indonesia.<br /><br />Explaining why they have still not returned to East Timor, Eurico Guterrez, a former militia leader, says: "They threaten us: they say we shouldn't come back because we betrayed our country, that we chose to be Indonesian so we don't deserve to return home."<br /><br />But these militia members stranded in Indonesia now have an unlikely ally: East Timor's president, Jose Ramos Horta, who has come out in favour of amnesties.<br /><br />Ramos-Horta told Al Jazeera that people in East Timor should "let bygones be bygones", although many are calling for the perpetrators of the violence to be tried in court.<br /><br />As Andrew Thomas reports from Dili, East Timor's capital. the big question now facing the young country is: Justice, no matter what the consequences, or integration, whatever the cost?