Jakarta – Anger over an international probe into last year's atrocities in East Timor on Thursday prompted Indonesia's parliament to review its agreement with the United Nations. The move follows repeated threats by the army and MPs to reject the accord with the UN administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

House speaker Akbar Tanjung, speaking after a meeting between parliament leaders and Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, said the review would take place next month, after the year-end parliament recess. The house would propose changes to articles in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with UNTAET, if they were not in line with Indonesia's law on international treaties, Tanjung added.

Thursday's meeting was called after the top brass of the Indonesian army, and the defence lawyers for military and police officers implicated in the East Timor violence, protested the presence of UNTAET lawyers at a planned questioning session last week. None of the witnesses or suspects turned up and the UNTAET team returned to East Timor empty handed.

"Our meeting resulted in an agreement to discuss more thoroughly articles in the MoU in the next parliamentary session," Tanjung said. "Should there be articles which are not in accordance with our law, the government, through the attorney general's office, will be asked to talk to UNTAET to make modifications," he added.

Darusman said the government would implement the accord only after it had been reviewed by the house. But he insisted that the uproar over the accord – which allows UNTAET officials to be present during questioning of suspects and witnesses in the Timor violence – stemmed from an "unnecessary misunderstanding".

Darusman also urged the house to remember that the accord, signed in February by Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab, was intended to prevent members of the Indonesian military and police from facing an international tribunal. The move has been threatened by UN human rights chief Mary Robinson if Indonesia fails to bring those responsible to trial.

Marzuki said that although he agreed with the military's stance on rejecting foreign involvement in the investigations, the MoU was "not tantamount to intervention, this is an accord which is based on law". Lawyers for the suspects, MPs and the military have branded the agreement "illegal and unpatriotic".