Dili – East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao on Friday said the government may consider pushing the United Nations to convene a special war crimes tribunal to try Indonesian officers allegedly responsible for the destruction of the territory in 1999.

Gusmao's comments came after he met with Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He also said he told Robinson that the need for an international tribunal is being assessed.

This marked the first time that the leadership of the new nation has hinted it may support a war crimes tribunal akin to those for Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia.

In the past, Dili has always said it trusted Indonesian courts to deliver justice to those accused of inciting the violence that led to hundreds of deaths and the destruction of much of East Timor after its people voted for independence in a UN-organized referendum.

Last week, two Indonesian courts acquitted a general and five other senior officers standing trial on charges of having allowed their subordinates to take part in massacres in the former Indonesian province in 1999.

The verdicts outraged human rights groups, who have long feared that most of those who unleashed the bloody mayhem across the half-island state would go unpunished, despite Indonesia's promises to the international community that justice would be done. Foreign governments – including the US – accused Indonesia of failing to aggressively prosecute the cases.

Robinson criticized the verdicts, saying prosecutors failed to present a case that demonstrated the killings and other rights violations were part of a widespread pattern of violence.

She said she planned take the issue to the UN Security Council. "The verdicts did not bring justice and we're sorry about that," she said.

Robinson, on a three-day visit to East Timor, is meeting with her UN colleagues, top government officials and survivors of a 1999 church massacre in which nearly 100 people were killed by pro-Indonesian militias.

She will also attend a ceremony at the Santa Cruz Cemetery in Dili Sunday, remembering the 200 who were killed there in 1991 when Indonesian soldiers opened fire on protesters.