Jakarta – A second general has denied an allegation by a former security guard of Indonesia's founding president Sukarno that he and three other generals forced Sukarno to hand over power to Suharto on March 11, 1966, reports said Friday.

"It is not true that Major General Basuki Rachmat or any of us three carried a handgun when meeting president Sukarno at the Bogor palace," retired general Mohammad Yusuf said according to the Antara news agency. Yusuf said only three generals – he and two other generals who have since died – came to the Bogor palace to meet Sukarno on May 11, 1996.

Sukarjo Wilarjito, 71, a second lieutenant who had been on guard duty at the presidential palace in the city of Bogor on March 11, 1966, has said that four generals had come to see Sukarno. Sukarjo has claimed he witnessed the four, two of them with unholstered pistols, force Sukarno to sign a document empowering then lieutenant general Suharto to take measures to restore order in the country.

The document, later known as the 11 March document, has been officially used to legitimize Suharto's ascent into power during his 32-year iron-fisted rule which ended in May when he was toppled by popular unrest. The official version of the event has said that three generals went up to see Sukarno in Bogor, in the hills outside Jakarta that day. There was no mention of pistols.

Retired general Maraden Panggabean, who Wilarjito said was among the four he saw at the Bogor palace, has already denied he was present on that day. The document empowered Suharto to take the necessary measures to restore order after an abortive coup attempt blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) on September 30 the previous year.

Suharto shortly afterwards banned the PKI, then Asia's second largest communist party after China, and its teachings and launched a campaign against communists and their sympathisers that left over half a million people dead and millions jailed in the following years.

The legislature appointed Suharto as acting president in 1967 and president the following year. Sukarno was first put under house arrest and died in official disgrace in June 1970. March 11 was commemorated annually by Suharto's government and the date has been used for the five-yearly presidential elections that returned Suharto to power six times running.