Indonesian military chief rejects report on East Timor atrocities

JAKARTA, Jan 22, 2006 (AFP) - Indonesia's armed forces chief on Sunday rejected the findings of a report that alleges his country's 24-year occupation of East Timor caused the deaths of up to 183,000 people.

"I am not convinced that that many (victims) were the result of what the TNI (Indonesian armed forces) and Polri (the national police) did at that time," General Endriartono Sutarto told local radio.

He also denied that the military or the police intentionally caused famine in East Timor, as alleged in the more than 2,000-page report compiled by the independent Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation.

"That is not true at all. Even if there was famine, it may have been because the war made food scarce. That is not something intentional caused by the TNI," he said, according to the Detikcom online news service.

The report, which has not been publicly released, was presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan by East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao on Friday in New York.

Gusmao has wanted to keep it secret for fear of irritating Indonesia. Excerpts, however, appeared in The Australian newspaper last week.

Among the report's conclusions was that the policies of the Indonesian military against East Timor's civilian population caused the deaths of between 84,000 and 183,000 people -- up to a third of the territory's population -- between 1975 and 1999.

More than 90 percent of the deaths were due to hunger and illness, the report said, according to The Australian.

Sutarto said that he had not yet received a copy of the report.

Last week Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono's said the report was "a war of statistics and data about things that have never occurred" in Indonesia.

Indonesia annexed East Timor with the tacit approval of major powers but the brutality of the occupation turned world opinion against Jakarta and led to a vote for independence in 1999.