Catharine Munro, Jakarta – The Indonesian Government has ordered an investigation into links between a fatal ambush on international schoolteachers near a mine in Papua and a trip to Australia by a group of Papuans at the time of the attack.

Human rights activists claim Jakarta was trying to invoke the spectre of Australia's role in East Timor in 1999 to pass blame for the Papua killings.

On August 30, one Indonesian and two American schoolteachers were shot dead near the copper and gold mine owned by US-based Freeport-McMoRan close to Timika township. The Indonesian Government blamed the Free Papua Movement guerrilla group. Papuan human rights groups accused the Indonesian military.

Indonesian Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered government agents to probe a trip by eight Indonesians from Papua on August 30 to a reconciliation and conflict prevention conference in Sydney.

Supervisor at the Human Rights and Advocacy Centre in Papua, John Rumbiak, attending the conference, said the Australian link was baseless. "They try to look at Australia from the perspective of East Timor," he said. Australian Embassy spokesman Kirk Coningham said: "We are a little bemused as to how the two [events] could possibly be linked."