DILI, East Timor (AP) – A decade after tiny East Timor broke from Indonesia and prompted one of the most expensive U.N.-led nation-building projects in history, there is little to show for the billions spent.

The world has given more than $8.8 billion in assistance to East Timor since the vote for independence in 1999, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from the U.N. and 46 donor countries and agencies. That works out to $8,000 for each of East Timor's 1.1 million people, one of the highest per person rates of international aid.

But little of the money, perhaps no more than a dollar of every 10, appears to have made it into East Timor's economy. Instead, it goes toward foreign security forces, consultants and administration, among other things.

In the meantime, data from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Food Program, U.N. Development Program and others show the money has done little to help the poor. In fact, poverty has increased. Roads are in disrepair, there is little access to clean water or health services, and the capital is littered with abandoned, burned-out buildings where the homeless squat.

``The international intervention has preserved the peace, which was always its primary objective,'' said James Dobbins, director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center. ``Its success in promoting political reform and economic development has been more limited.''

East Timor was once seen as the poster child for U.N.nation-building.

After a bloody 24-year occupation by Indonesia that left 174,000 dead, the people of this predominantly Catholic former Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly in a U.N.-managed referendum on Aug. 30, 1999, to separate.

The vote triggered a rampage by Indonesian soldiers and proxy militias who killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed much of the infrastructure.

A provisional U.N. administration restored basic services, repaired buildings and resettled hundreds of thousands of people who had lost their homes.