The Federal Defence Minister says Australian military commitment to peacekeeping in East Timor will be phased out over the next 18 months.

Senator Robert Hill was in Darwin yesterday to farewell soldiers heading to East Timor in a peacekeeping role. Included in the battalion is Alpha Company, manned largely by reservists.

Senator Hill says the current mandate in East Timor has a built-in reduction plan which should negate the need for Australian troops in the near future.

"This current mandate had a period of two years from independence and it has within it a formula for reducing numbers over that period of two years," he said. "So if you ask me now, I'd say that we wouldn't be planning for military deployment in East Timor after two years."off to say what New Zealand has done to compensate for its silence but it has done nothing for its own citizen and his family," he said. The document came from a 1994 partial document release, of which his family had not been informed. It revealed that the Muldoon government did not wish to take up Mr Cunningham's death with the Indonesians, but to leave it to Australia.

The document stated: "There would seem to be no clear cut case against Indonesia for any specific violation of International Law and as such there is no presumption for us to press a case in conjunction with Australia. We can expect that to do so would harm our own relations with Indonesia. Mr Cunningham, while a New Zealand citizen, was an Australian resident, was employed by an Australian organisation, was a member of the Australian Journalists Association, and his closest relatives live in Australia".

"This document has made us very angry, to see how quickly the New Zealand Government was prepared to ditch any responsibility for Gary," Mr Cunningham said.