Canberra – Nobel Peace prize winner Jose Ramos Horta believes the release of classified documents on East Timor will reveal Australian complicity in Indonesian atrocities.

The East Timorese activist said full disclosure of government records on East Timor during the 1970s would also help Australia avoid similar mistakes in the future.

"I look forward to the release of documents because it would reveal once and for all the complicity of many Australian leaders in the suppression of truth," he told AAP. "From (former prime minister) Gough Whitlam to (former ambassador to Indonesia) Richard Woolcott, a lot of immorality and pragmatism was policy of Australia for too many years."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is considering releasing documents on East Timor foreign policy between 1974 and 1976, during the period when Indonesia occupied the former Portuguese territory and five newsmen working for Australian media were killed.

Mr Ramos Horta supported the opposition call for the government to declassify all official records relating to Australian policy towards East Timor in the 1970s. "If the government wants to be seen as serious in revealing the truth, it must not be partisan, it must reveal all documents," he said. "These would reveal the Australian government was aware that five newsmen were murdered in East Timor in 1975 and that 200,000 people lost their lives in the worst of the massacres in '77-78.

Mr Ramos Horta, who shared the 1996 Peace Prize with compatriot Bishop Carloa Belo, said the Australian government was fully briefed by its own intelligence services on atrocities. "The Australian government was completely silent then," he said.

Mr Downer's office said if it decided to release the documents the process could take two years. Classified documents from 1974 will be released by the archives in 2004 under the 30-year rule.