Vaudine England, Jakarta – American officials are trying to recall a published history of how the United States supported anti-communist moves that brought former president Suharto to power and left as many as one million Indonesians dead.

But historians in Indonesia are unfazed by details that have emerged from the account – a State Department publication mistakenly released before internal and CIA screening.

Jakarta newspapers carried front-page stories yesterday about the US efforts at damage control, but noted the idea of covert US engagement in Indonesia in the mid-1960s is nothing new.

"It happened in the past. We are now looking forward. History is only there to be learned from," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Sulaiman Abdulmanan, adding he was confident there would be no "disturbances" in Indonesia's relationship with the US.

The timing of the report adds to Washington's embarrassment. The documents record how the US backed moves against the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as part of efforts to depose then-president Sukarno, who was disliked for his alleged communist leanings and his strongly anti-Western foreign policy. Sukarno's daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, became Indonesia's fifth president last week.

Efforts to recall the controversial records have only served to focus attention on their content, which has long been obscured by former dictator Suharto's policy of rewriting the past.

Only recently have Indonesians been allowed to speak freely about events in the 1960s. Officially, they have been told that communists mounted a coup on September 30, 1965, which heroic military officers and civilians put down. The PKI was banned, relations with China severed and bloody purges carried out against alleged communists.

Other independent versions suggest the coup or at least its murderous aftermath could have been masterminded by those who benefited most, namely Suharto and his friends.

That he had friends abroad is not surprising, but now there is proof in the form of a memo from US ambassador Marshall Green, on December 2, 1965.

This recommended payment of 50 million rupiah (then worth about US$1.1 million) to a leader of the Kap-Gestapu, an army-inspired but civilian-staffed group which, the memo said, "is still carrying the burden of current repressive efforts targeted against PKI, particularly in central Java".

Harold Crouch, head of Jakarta's International Crisis Group office and author of The Army and Politics in Indonesia, said: "I didn't know for sure that the US gave money, but it's the sort of thing most people would have assumed took place."

The report confirms that the US provided anti-communist leaders such as Suharto with a list of leading members of the PKI who were subsequently killed. An aerogram sent on August 10, 1966, by ambassador Green said the list prepared by the embassy "is apparently being used by Indonesian security authorities who seem to lack even the simplest overt information on PKI leadership at this time".

Such stories of a CIA hit-list are also not new, however, having circulated regularly in recent years.