Pasuruan – Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid on Friday suggested that a "third hand" had been inciting his followers to excessive violence in East Java, and urged his people to conduct vigilante-style arrests to stop them

"If you see these people playing up, catch them immediately, don't wait for the police, because the police have to gather legal evidence first," Wahid told a gathering of religious leader in the East Java capital of Surabaya. "If you already know they are going to act, we must act first," he added.

Wahid's comments came as criticism mounted against almost a week of violent attacks by thousands of his followers in East Java – in which journalists have been attacked and the offices of the opposition Golkar party trashed and burned.

His supporters, from the 40-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) that he once led, have been retaliating against moves by the parliament in Jakarta to unseat Wahid, and call a national assembly session to impeach him.

The NU was deeply involved in the mass killing of communists and leftists in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966.

Wahid said he thought that the "third hand ... leading the way" in the riots by his NU supporters were the same group blamed for the 1996 riots against the Indonesian Democracy Party (PDI) party of his vice-president Megawati Sukarnoputri.

He also said police reports had indicated they might have links to non-governmental organizations with foreign links. "I have seen reports from police and others, that there were elements, we could call them the third party. They [police] named these people, but I don't want to name them without strong evidence."

"They're the same group which caused confrontation when the attack occurred on PDI headquarters in 1996," he said, referring to a small leftist party [People's Democratic Party, PRD - JB] which police blamed for the attacks on the party of Megawati, at the time a popular opposition figure pitted against then-president Suharto.

"This group stirred up ABRI [the armed forces] as they did in 1996," he said. "I got a report from the East Java military commander, that the same group held a meeting in East Java.

"According to that report they were funded by foreign NGOs ... to finish off the role of TNI [the new initials for the armed forces] in this region. These people led the way ... and showed the way to the people who were already angry ... and that's how it [the burning of the Golkar offices] happened."