Agence France Presse in Jakarta – Jakarta yesterday issued a fresh appeal to Switzerland to help recover cash that may have been stashed there by former president Suharto, suspected of embezzling billions from state coffers during his 32-year rule.

"Our ambassador in Switzerland is now trying to convince Swiss monetary authorities that some of the conditions they put forward have been met," Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman said. He said a demand by the Swiss Government that Suharto, who is under house arrest, be named a suspect before they helped had been met.

"[Naming Mr Suharto as a suspect] had not been intended to fulfil their wish but was based on the due legal process in Indonesia," he said.

However, Mr Darusman said Jakarta was unable, in such a short time, to meet a demand by Swiss authorities to provide account numbers under which Suharto might have deposited the cash in Switzerland. "We don't want the people to misunderstand that ... we know exactly the whereabouts of what is suspected as [Suharto's] wealth parked overseas," he said.

Mr Darusman also said that the negotiations with the Swiss Government, which followed a request for co-operation by President Abdurrahman Wahid in February, were in their early stages.

Mr Wahid said this week that Mr Suharto's wealth was estimated at US$25 billion, but Mr Darusman said he could not confirm that figure. "We have neither an official nor an unofficial estimate," he said.

On June 6, an Indonesian court rejected a US$27 billion defamation suit filed by Mr Suharto against the American magazine Time, which reported last year that his family had amassed US$15 billion. Time also alleged that Mr Suharto hurriedly transferred about US$9 billion from a Swiss account to an Austrian one shortly after he stepped down in May, 1998, amid mass protests.

But Mr Darusman said the court ruling did not necessarily mean the US$15 billion allegation was true. He also said his office would summon Indonesian lawyers representing Time and the magazine's editor in Hong Kong to explain the information in the article.

On Tuesday, Mr Darusman told Parliament that, based on testimony from 101 witnesses, it was evident Mr Suharto had siphoned off funds from seven non-profit charity foundations he once controlled. The witnesses included the foundations' officials, state and private bankers, and officials from companies linked to Mr Suharto and his business associates.

In a report, the Attorney-General said large amounts of the foundations' money was invested in the Nusamba group, controlled by Suharto's crony, Mohammad "Bob" Hasan.

Some funds were also used to buy shares in companies owned by his cronies or family members and to salvage Bank Duta, in which two of the foundations and Nusamba have a stake. The report said Mr Suharto also lent some of the funds to recapitalise Bank Umum Nasional, also owned by Mr Hasan.