Jakarta – A human rights lobbyist on Wednesday called on the United Nations to conduct the same sort of inquiry it is making into alleged atrocities in East Timor in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province.

"If the UN has decided to investigate human rights abuses in East Timor, the same thing must also be done in Aceh," Hasballah Saad, the secretary general of the Solidarity for Human Rights in Aceh, told AFP.

"The degree of human rights abuses in Aceh is almost equal to those committed in East Timor," said Saad, who is also an MP from the National Mandate Party.

He said that local rights groups would cooperate with the UN body to provide data on rights abuses in the province if an investigation was conducted.

An emergency session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on Monday voted for an international inquiry into alleged atrocities in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Jakarta in 1975.

Aceh has been rocked by violence between soldiers and members and supporters of the Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement) which has been fighting for an Islamic state since the 1970s.

Resentment and discontent in Aceh against the central government has spiralled following Jakarta's failure to punish human rights violators during a decade of military anti-rebel operations which ended last year.

When the operations ended, rights groups unearthed mass graves and brought forward scores of victims of rape and torture which shocked Indonesia.

Military violence continued even after the operations were halted. The bitterness against the government was further fuelled by dissatisfaction over the exploitation of Aceh's natural resources, including natural gas, with little of the profit funneled back to the province.

The discontent has led to mounting calls for a referendum on self-determination for Aceh, which the government has staunchly ruled out.