Jakarta – Indonesia had ordered an American human rights activist, who accused the United States military of "directly supporting" repression in Indonesia, to leave the country, a source said yesterday.

A member of the security forces told Mr Allan Nairn, a journalist and activist, he would be expelled, the source said.

Mr Nairn, a member of the association Justice For All and an active campaigner against the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, told a news conference yesterday that the US Defence Department was still training the Indonesian military, contrary to an order by the US Congress. He produced what he said was a Pentagon list of dozens of training operations conducted in Indonesia over the past six years.

US authorities defended the program, saying it did not conflict with a military aid ban against Indonesia.

Mr Nairn's documents showed training in urban combat, psychological warfare, individual close-contact combat and target shooting.

He was one of two journalists present at the Dili massacre on 12 November 1991 when the Indonesian army opened fire at a procession killing - the Timorese resistance says - 271 people. The Indonesian authorities said about 50 died. The massacre prompted the US Congress the following year to suspend military aid to the country.

US officials said yesterday the training program was a legal form of cooperation rather than aid, saying it did nothing to boost Indonesia's military capabilities. The Pentagon acknowledged it trained various Indonesian military units, including the elite Kopassus force, from 1992 to 1997.

"These exercises of are a purely military nature and are unrelated to crowd control," a State Department spokesman said, adding that the Clinton administration "in no way attempted to mislead Congress".

But lawmakers and human rights activists said Washington was in effect supporting repressive tactics of President Soeharto.