The Indonesian President, Mr Abdurrahman Wahid, said for the first time yesterday that senior Indonesian military officers accused of human rights abuses in East Timor should be tried.
While the move may be aimed at forestalling indictments by an international court, it could bring closer the downfall of Indonesia's leading military official, Gen. Wiranto, and break the power of the military in Indonesia, observers in Jakarta said.
There has been a growing public clamour for the generals to be made to account for years of abuses, especially in East Timor and the separatist provinces of Aceh and Irian Jaya. In a BBC interview yesterday, Mr Wahid said: "If they issued the orders themselves, if they did the atrocities themselves then they have to stand trial."
Mr Wahid, who makes policy "on the run" each day, as one commentator put it, has by this statement overruled his Defence Minister, Mr Juwono Sudarsono, who said two weeks ago that officers in charge would not be tried because they were implementing government policy.
The Indonesian commission investigating atrocities in East Timor said last week it would summon several generals for questioning, including Gen. Wiranto, who is Co-ordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs.
This could open the door for Gen. Wiranto to step down from the cabinet. If he does not, it could provoke a crisis between the army and Indonesia's first democratic government.
Mr Wahid said on Monday that his policy that cabinet ministers should be suspended if they were investigated by state prosecutors and fired if convicted remained unchanged. He said: "My statement when I inaugurated them remains put, that ministers under legal probe must be deactivated, and must quit once the court convicts them."
Under the glare of international scrutiny, Indonesian officers now seem to be pulling the plug on the militias they created and sustained in East Timor and who are now an international embarrassment.
The militias were under the nominal control of figures like East Timorese landowner, Mr Joao da Silva Tavares, who on Sunday met East Timor independence leader, Mr Xanana Gusmao, at a military camp in Indonesian West Timor.
In an extraordinary display of affection, Mr Tavares promised to disband the militias, who hold an estimated 169,800 East Timorese in camps in West Timor.
Similar promises of reconciliation by the militias in the past have proved not to be sincere, but Mr Tavares may be feeling that not only is he on the losing side but that his patrons are running for cover.
Sources in the region said the meeting was likely set up by Gen. Wiranto to improve his image by being seen to move to end the human rights abuses against refugees in West Timor.
The most obvious charge prosecutors will put to Gen. Wiranto is "guilt by omission", according to Indonesian newspaper reports of an inquiry commission set up by the National Commission on Human Rights chaired by Mr Marzuki Darusman, the state's attorney general.
As head of the armed forces, Gen. Wiranto visited East Timor a number of times during the terror unleashed by Indonesian-backed militias and Indonesian soldiers before the arrival of a UN force in September.
He failed to stop the killings and arson after the August 31st UN-organised vote for independence, which left the former Portuguese colony 75 per cent destroyed.
Both the inquiry commission and a UN-sanctioned Commission for Inquiry in East Timor have blamed members of the Indonesian military and gangs of pro-Jakarta militiamen for the atrocities, and have accused the generals of letting the violence run unchecked. Also facing questioning this weekend are former East Timor military chief, Brig Gen. Tono Suratman; former East Timor police chief, Brig Gen. Timbul Silaen; Maj. Gen. Zacky Anwar Makarim; Maj. Gen. Sjafrie Syamsuddin of the army's elite special force (Kopassus), and former Bali-based regional military chief, Maj. Gen. Adam Damiri.
Maj. Gen. Dimiri, head of the military area that included East Timor, allegedly held a meeting of militia leaders and promised weapons for 2,000 men and, at a later meeting of officers in Dili, planned operation "Global Clean Sweep" designed to destroy the East Timorese Resistance.
Gen. Wiranto has rejected all accusations of human rights violations in East Timor.