By Seth Mydans

Jakarta - An Indonesian human rights panel today accused top military commanders, including Gen. Wiranto, of involvement in "crimes against humanity" in East Timor, and a United Nations team reported today that it had reached similar conclusions and recommended that military leaders be tried by an international tribunal. The Indonesian panel handed its case to the attorney general for formal investigation, while the Security Council has not committed itself to establishing an international tribunal for East Timor. The Indonesian government has said it prefers to pursue charges stemming from the violence in East Timor on its own.

The human rights panel's accusation against the once untouchable military leadership intensified a high-stakes campaign under President Abdurrahman Wahid to reduce the political power of the military and to make it answerable for its abuses. He has said that he would fire General Wiranto from his post in the cabinet if he was cited in the human rights report.

"Facts show the civilian and military apparatus, including the police, cooperated with the militias to create an atmosphere that supported crimes against humanity," said Djoko Sugianto, a member of the government panel. "These were in the form of mass killings, torture, kidnapping, violence against women -- including rape and sexual slavery -- forced evacuations and total destruction of property," he said.

The chairman of the panel, Albert Hasibuan, said General Wiranto is culpable because of his position as chief of the armed forces during violence in East Timor last year surrounding a referendum in which the people of the former Portuguese colony voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia. "He knew what happened, but did not take effective measures to handle or prevent the violence," he said. The general made no public comment about the report today. On Sunday he said, "We should just await the process of investigation." He has claimed in the past that he lost control of his men on the ground because of their emotional commitment to East Timor. Military analysts here disagree over whether he was culpable "by omission," as one panel member put it, or whether he was actively involved in creating, funding and commanding the irregular militias that carried out most of the violence and destruction.

The general has had an uneasy relationship with President Wahid, who removed him as armed forces commander when he took office in November but gave him the influential cabinet position of coordinating minister for security affairs. The president's unsubtle efforts to curb military power in Indonesia have caused rising discontent among officers. In recent weeks, rumors that he would remove General Wiranto have mingled with rumors that the military might strike back with some sort of coup.

Speaking to Reuters Television in Davos, Switzerland, where he is attending an economic conference, President Wahid said today that he would carry out his promise to dismiss the general if he was named in the report. "Oh yes, of course," he said. "I will ask him, to use a polite word, ask him to resign." Asked how the increasingly resentful military would react to the firing of the charismatic general, he asserted, "They will listen to us." Before leaving Jakarta on Friday, the president dismissed rumors of a coup (he called the restive generals "cowards") and signed a decree requiring General Wiranto and three other generals to give up their military commissions because they had become cabinet ministers.

Speaking at a joint news conference here with the human rights investigators, Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, said today that state prosecutors would investigate the allegations. But he did not say when any charges might be brought.

The special human rights panel named 33 people as culpable in the crimes in East Timor, including top military and police commanders there as well as local government officials and leaders of the militia groups. The sweeping accusations refuted concerns that a domestic Indonesian inquiry would, like similar panels in the past, lay the blame only on lower-ranking officers while leaving their commanders untouched. The president has asked the United Nations to hold back on any war crimes investigation of its own while Indonesia attempts to discipline its own troops.

The Indonesian military has been condemned around the world for its role in the violence in East Timor. The military invaded East Timor in 1975 and was widely accused of human rights abuses in the ensuing years as it fought to subdue an armed independence movement.

When former President B.J. Habibie, ignoring warnings of potential violence, announced early last year that he would allow a referendum, the military set about to undermine it by forming and arming militias. Many observers including foreign journalists witnessed the close involvement of the military with the militias. They were seen giving them training, transport and logistics support. In some cases military officers, sometimes in uniform and sometimes in civilian clothes, appeared to be leading militia actions. Some of the attacks and threats were directed at the United Nations, which had organized the referendum. A number of East Timorese working for the United Nations were killed. "The mass killings claimed the lives mostly of civilians," said Mr. Sugianto of the hunan rights panel. "They were conducted in a systematic and cruel way. Many were committed at churches and police headquarters."

East Timor today is firmly under the control of United Nations peacekeeping forces, but they continue to face problems in maintaining order. Homeless, jobless and traumatized, some East Timorese have become restive and violent, with brawls breaking out among gangs of young men. The militias continue to hold tens of thousands of forced evacuees in camps in Indonesian West Timor, where they drove them after the independence vote in an apparent campaign of depopulation. Sporadic militia violence continues as well. International forces said today that about 12 men armed with homemade guns confronted troops in the enclave of Oecussi, which abuts West Timor.

In Singapore, Jose Ramos-Horta, the East Timorese publicist who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1996, said General Wiranto had been directly involved in the funding and training of the militias that carried out much of the violence and destruction. He said the General must face trial if human rights are to be respected. "In this day and age you cannot kill hundreds of people, destroy a whole country and then just get fired," he said.