Joanne Collins, Jakarta – A UN investigator examining Indonesia's judiciary said on Saturday the country's legal system was one of the worst he had seen and would take years to repair and raise to international standards.

United Nations special rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy said President Megawati Sukarnoputri's government lacked the political will to root out corruption and implement reforms critical to reassuring foreigners that Indonesia is a safe place to invest.

"I didn't realise the situation would be as bad as I have seen, particularly the structure of the system," he told a small gathering of reporters late on Saturday.

"For a country like Indonesia – which has been independent since 1945, the largest Muslim nation in the world and next to China and India the largest population – it is something I feel should never have been allowed to come to this extent," he added.

The former commercial lawyer arrived in Jakarta on Monday for a 10-day fact-finding mission looking into judicial corruption and the independence of the judiciary. He is to report his findings to the UN Human Rights Commission next April.

Timing

Cumaraswamy's visit comes amid a string of court cases against high-profile and powerful Indonesians, and as the country's new human rights court wades through its first trials over the bloodshed at the time of East Timor's independence vote in 1999.

On the Timor trials he said: "We are concerned about whether there was any form of selectivism in the various people who are being bought before the court and why certain others were not produced. I think these are answers that ought to be given by the authorities concerned when the time comes."

One key criticism has been the failure to try Indonesia's military chief at the time of the carnage, General Wiranto. But Cumaraswamy said there was still time for the government to charge others over the violence that racked the tiny territory after it voted in a UN-sponsored ballot to split from 24 years of often brutal Indonesian rule.

The United Nations, which ran the territory after the vote, estimates that more than 1,000 people were killed.

Embarrassed judges

Cumaraswamy, a Malaysian whose mandate covers nearly 200 countries, said the government needed to clean up the tarnished image of Indonesia's judiciary and address allegations of corruption.

"Judges themselves, who I am sure would be quite embarrassed every morning they wake up to read in the newspapers and when they go to sleep and see on the TV ... allegations of a corrupt judiciary have been levelled at them," he said. "Even those very honest judges are being implicated."

He said the government needed to set out firm policy guidelines, create an action plan and implement it quickly.

But there were some words of encouragement. The trials of former president Suharto's favourite son and of the country's parliamentary speaker for example were indicative of efforts to make a fresh start and show that genuine legal reform was taking place, he said.

"The very fact that they are before the courts ... is a sign that the system of justice is being applied to such personalities without discrimination."