Jenny Grant, Jakarta – A transcript of an alleged telephone conversation between President Bacharuddin Habibie and Attorney-General Andi Ghalib published yesterday suggests the graft investigation focusing on ex-president Suharto is a farce.

The transcript of the conversation, allegedly taped on December 10 – the day after Mr Suharto was interrogated, was published by the reputable weekly magazine Panji.

It says Mr Ghalib told the President the interrogation went for three hours. Mr Ghalib reportedly said: "If it only went for two hours, people would say 'what the hell kind of drama is this'."

The Attorney-General is alleged to have told Mr Habibie that Mr Suharto wanted them to pursue some sort of investigation to avoid "rough public justice".

"After we summoned him, his blood pressure has gone down," Mr Ghalib supposedly said. "Sir, people's reaction has returned to pity him. This is a good start."

The magazine did not say how it obtained the recording and editors said they were still checking its validity.

The head of the People's Movement Concerned for State Wealth, Kastorius Sinaga, said it appeared to show executive interference in a judicial process.

"It clearly shows the intervention by the President into law enforcement," Mr Sinaga said. "We expected this under the New Order, but not in the reform era."

He said if proved true, the recording showed the investigation into Mr Suharto's assets was pure theatre. "They want to defend the social image of Suharto," he said. "There is no progress, it is just being played out in the newspapers."

Mr Ghalib's investigation team says it has found no evidence that Mr Suharto illegally amassed wealth.

The publication of the alleged conversation comes a day after the Deputy Attorney-General for Intelligence Affairs, Major-General Syamsu Djalal, was replaced after only five months in office. He had been privately critical of the slow pace of the Suharto investigation.

The recorded conversation was distributed on a cassette along with another conversation, allegedly between Mr Habibie and the chairman of the ruling Golkar party, Akbar Tandjung.

University of Indonesia political scientist Arbi Sanit said military intelligence agents might have recorded the conversations. "But it is not the work of a layman," he told the magazine. "It's possible people in intelligence or telephone technicians did this." Presidential adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar said she doubted the validity of the transcript.

But Mr Habibie ordered the military yesterday to investigate the alleged phone tap. "We need to take action because that's against human rights and privacy," State Secretary Akbar Tandjung quoted Mr Habibie as saying.

[On February 20, the Jakarta Post reported that Armed Forces chief, Wiranto, will initiate an investigation into the authenticity of the phone conversation. Wiranto said there was a possibility that the conversation was "engineered". Ghalib has insisted that the voice in the recordings is not his and that he could not recall ever having such a conversation with Habibie. On the same day, the Singapore Business Times reported that former minister H.S. Dillon – now a member of the National Commission on Human Rights – has called for the president to be impeached over the recordings on the grounds that Habibie abused presidential powers - James Balowski.].