MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In just a few hours, East Timor will become the world's newest nation. Thousands of people are in the capital for celebrations, including CNN's Atika Shubert. She joins us live via videophone now from Dili. Hello, Atika.</s>ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles. We're about three hours away from independence, counting down to midnight. We have quite a few VIP guests here tonight in Dili. We have U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who's here tonight. We also have several heads of state, including neighboring Australian Prime Minister John Howard. And of course leading the U.S. delegation on behalf of President George W. Bush is former President Bill Clinton. He enjoyed very good relations with leaders here in East Timor or East Timor's soon-to-be leaders. It was under his administration that East Timor voted to break away from Indonesia, voted for independence and his administration strongly supported that choice. Now the friendly relationship between the -- Mr. Clinton and East Timor's leaders has clearly been maintained. That was evidenced today in a press conference between Mr. Clinton and East Timor's Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta.</s>BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am the second most favorite of my family to Mr. Ramos Horta, and my daughter could not come so he is actually disappointed to see me.</s>CLINTON: But I'm doing the best I can to make up.</s>JOSE RAMOS HORTA, FOREIGN MINISTER, EAST TIMOR: I sent an e-mail message to President Clinton. I say bring Chelsea, my favorite first daughter in the world. But the president was scared because the moment he got off the plane, he immediately explained why Chelsea is not coming. We accept the apology.</s>SHUBERT: Now in addition to the many VIP guests here, as you mentioned, there are at least 200,000 people expected here tonight, very excited to see East Timor become the newest nation in the world -- Miles.</s>O'BRIEN: OK, thank you very much.
East Timor, World's Newest Nation