As the first trial of 18 Indonesian army officers and civilian officials accused of rights violations in East Timor resumes this week, evidence has emerged that the Australian government withheld vital information indicating the direct role of Jakarta's generals in the 1999 violence that swept the former Indonesian province.

Leaked details to the Sydney Morning Herald indicate how Australian intelligence intercepted electronic messages between Indonesian officers who were waging a campaign of fear to prevent East Timorese voting for independence from Indonesia at a UN-sponsored referendum on Aug 30,1999.

But this collected evidence that could provide a vital link to the mastermind of the brutal violence after the vote, which led to the deaths of nearly 1,000 East Timorese and destroyed most of the territory's infrastructure, has been withheld from UN investigators.

Transcripts of the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) Black operations

The Herald also revealed, quoting from a DSD intercept, that when the Indonesian army officers failed to prevent a vote for independence, they then organised the forced deportation of one-third of East Timor's population and the destruction of infrastructure, with the assistance of two other ministers in Habibie's Cabinet, former generals AM Hendropriyono and Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah.

Yosfiah, then the information minister in Habibie's Cabinet, has also been implicated in the 1975 killings of five Australian and British journalists in the East Timor border town of Balibo.

"The leak of highly classified intelligence material is the first time raw DSD intercepts relating to a contemporary event have been disclosed. It reflects deep disquiet in defence circles that Canberra at first downplayed the high-level Indonesian military involvement with the militias blaming it on 'rogue elements' and since then has not used it to help war crimes investigations,'' wrote McDonald.

The daily also quoted from DSD intercepts in Feb 1999 showing that Jakarta had sent detachments of special forces, code-named Tribuana and Venus, to begin "black operations" in East Timor targeting pro-independence political activists and supporters.

The DSD, according to the Herald , had also picked up conversations of the East Timor army commander (then) Colonel Tono Suratman supervising the notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres.

This is not the first time Australia has been accused of withholding vital information on East Timor from the United Nations.

An Australian Army intelligence officer who served in East Timor accused Canberra of concealing vital evidence on Indonesian army and militia war crimes in 1999.

In May, Captain Andrew Plunkett, of 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, told The Age newspaper that a massacre of more than 40 people at a police station in the border town of Maliana in Sept 1999 might not have occurred if the Australian government had acted on intelligence information predicting the killings.

He said that before the August 1999 referendum, he had seen accurate reports from the Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation, "none of which were being passed on to the UN on the ground''.

On the Maliana killings, Captain Plunkett was quoted as saying that Australian sources had accurately reported on Indonesian plans to kill independence supporters in Maliana, but their reports were "pushed up the chain of command, hosed down and politically wordsmithed by the Asia division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade".

He said the information was "held" at the department instead of being passed to UN observers in Maliana who could have warned the population.

International tribunal

The latest revelations do not add to Australia's reputation in relation to its actions on East Timor. For a long time, it had accepted Indonesia's annexation of East Timor, a policy that had come under from rights activists, but took an active part in international efforts to help the territory after the 1999 referendum.

The revelations also come as Indonesia begins efforts ostensibly to bring the perpetrators of the killing sprees and destruction that followed that historic vote.

In Jan 2000, the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on East Timor and the Indonesian government's own human rights commission both found the Indonesian military responsible for crimes against humanity committed in East Timor in 1999.

The UN commission called for the creation an international tribunal but Jakarta balked at the possibility of international trails, claiming the United Nations was interfering in its "internal affairs''.

As a compromise, and due to pressure from the international community, Jakarta promised to establish its own ad hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor.

In mid-January this year, after several months of political inaction, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri appointed ad hoc judges to the Indonesian Tribunal on East Timor.

But critics say the judges could be fearful in carrying out their appointed tasks because the president's office had not provided any measures to protect their safety, despite the fact that an Indonesian Supreme Court judge was assassinated last year after investigating corruption and human rights abuses.

In the dock at the opening of the trial Thursday, at separate sessions, were Indonesia's civilian governor of East Timor in 1999, Abilio Soares, and the provincial police chief, Brigadier General Timbul Silaen. Four hours after the hearing began, the judges adjourned the case for a week.

Silaen is one of three generals among the18 military personnel and civilian militia leaders accused by Indonesian and UN investigators of participation or responsibility in some of the more large-scale acts of murder in 1999.

The other two are Maj Gen Adam Damiri, former head of the Udayana regional command, which included East Timor, and Brig Gen Tono Suratman, who was East Timor military commander for much of 1999. (IPS)