Scores of Americans who might once have shown their disapproval by picketing the South African Embassy are now here serving as peace monitors and voter education specialists.

Even the compound of the Nordic peace monitors, in the eastern town of Batticaloa, was bombed, on Jan. 13.

They are counselors of homeless children, voter education specialists, peace monitors, journalists and the like who generally understand the risks and take precautions.

But congress officials and independent peace monitors worry that the explosions are a premonition of worse to come if right-wingers fail - as expected - to win the right to an autonomous enclave.

This week, for the first time, a peace monitor was killed on the job, ending three years of tacit immunity.

He served as a civilian peace monitor in Bougainville Province between 1999 and 2003.

Before long the A.N.C. partisans are outnumbered by a vociferous crowd of National Party supporters, and they are barking insults at one another across a cordon of peace monitors.

"Suddenly from nowhere the shots sounded all over the place," said Rupert Lorimer, a member of Parliament serving as a peace monitor, who dove face down into a flower bed.

It will have broad powers to execute the peace accords in consultation with Mr. Cristiani and international peace monitors.

In March, international peace monitors withdraw from some posts amid growing lawlessness.