New York – The idea of forming an international tribunal to try the 1999 post-ballot human rights violations in East Timor is not likely to gain the support of UN Security Council members, an Indonesian diplomat said here Wednesday.

"I think, they (UNSC members) are in general aware that forming and maintaining an international tribunal will be costly while such tribunals in the past have not always been effective," Rezlan Ishar Jenie, Indonesia's Permanent Representatives to the UN, said.

He was commenting on the recommendation the UN Commission of Experts has made to the UNSC that Indonesia should retry a number of Indonesian military men and civilians for responsibility over the East Timor human rights abuses failing which they should be brought before an international tribunal.

Rezlan said Indonesia and East Timor were continuing to promote the Commission for Truth and Friendship (CTF) which they had established to settle the 1999 incidents legally.

About Indonesia's official stance on the report the UN Commission of Experts had submitted to the UNSC, Rezlan said formulating it was up to the government.

The UN Commission of Experts' report included a recommendation that Indonesia retry in six months' time and under UN supervision the Indonesian military officers and military leaders who were once arraigned in court over the East Timor human rights abuses. If Indonesia refused to do so, the same Indonesian military officers and militia leaders should be tried by an international tribunal.

Another alternative the Commission had proposed was to consider referring the East Timor human rights case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands.

The Commission which consisted of Prafullachandra Bhagwati of India, Yozo Yokota of the UN Human Rights Commission and Shaitta Shammeem of Fiji had also said in its report that the ad hoc trials the Indonesian government had once conducted to settle the East Timor human rights violations were not enough.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, through its spokesman, Yuri Thamrin, had recently deplored that UN Commission's recommendation was made not long after the Commission visited Indonesia.