London – The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair came under a hail of criticism Sunday over the imminent delivery of British military planes to Indonesia despite a European Union embargo resulting from the East Timor crisis.

Three Hawk ground attack aircraft at the centre of the upset, bound for Indonesia, were grounded in Thailand, officially because one of the three transit pilots was ill.

The government said was powerless to stop delivery of the Hawks to Indonesia, because the contract was signed before the European Union (EU) decreed an arms embargo last week.

The Conservative opposition used the occasion to attack the New Labour cabinet for not living up to its promises of "ethical diplomacy."

But "delivery was taken by the Indonesians before the embargo, indeed before the current crisis" in East Timor, the Labour junior defense minister John Spellar said in a televised interview on Sky News. "Obviously in the spirit of the embargo we would prefer that they did not go to Indonesia," he said.

Spellar noted that the three Hawk jets currently are in Thailand and that Britain was no longer was responsible for the aircraft. "Delivery has already been taken by the Indonesian government and they are in Thailand, which is a sovereign independent country, and they are owned by another sovereign independent country," he explained.

The EU issued the arms embargo against Indonesia on September 13 in response to murderous attacks by militias backed by Jakarta's forces against East Timorese who had voted overwhelmingly on August 30 for independence.

Spellar noted that the original contract had been signed by the previous Conservative government. The Conservative shadow defence spokesman, Iain Duncan Smith, said the episode showed that "the government is driven by hypocrisy at its core. It says one thing and does another."

Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs and defence spokesman, said "The Indonesians have broken the conditions upon which these aircraft were to be supplied. There is no legal or moral obligation for Britain to continue to fulfil the contract."

He said the British government was responsible for the confusion, leaving "itself open to accusations of complicity in the genocide in East Timor, both by arming the Indonesian generals and its refusal to revoke the licences for the Hawks."

The affair was revealed by The Sunday Times newspaper which said the planes were grounded in Thailand following an intervention by Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and not due to the ill health of one of the pilots.

A total of nine Hawks were granted export licenses by the former government. They are among a batch of 16 ordered in 1996, the key component of an estimated 300-million-pound (480-million-dollar) arms deal. There has been concern that Indonesia has flown some of the Hawks already delivered over East Timor despite assurances that it would not.