Dili – Timor Leste's Prime Minister yesterday called for the establishment of an international tribunal in a neutral country to try Indonesian military officers for the bloodshed that swept the territory when it voted to break from Jakarta in 1999.

Mr Mari Alkatiri also criticised the trials of 18 senior Indonesian officials in Jakarta over their alleged roles in the violence, which left up to 2,000 people dead.

"I am not satisfied [with the Jakarta trials]," he told reporters after meeting with President Xanana Gusmao. "They are like a piece of theatre." The Jakarta trials, which followed intense international pressure on Indonesia to prosecute those responsible, have so far acquitted 12 suspects and convicted five, who got sentences from three to 10 years.

Mr Alkatiri's comments will likely cheer local and foreign rights activists, who have also criticised the Jakarta trials and called on Mr Gusmao to push for the prosecution of the Indonesian officials in an international war crimes tribunal.

Mr Alkatiri said there was "an obligation to establish an international tribunal in a neutral country to punish and bring to justice the perpetrators". He did not elaborate.

The Prime Minister said he and several ministers were travelling to Jakarta on June 10 and would discuss the issue of an international tribunal with President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Indonesian troops and their militia proxies destroyed much of Timor Leste and killed up to 2,000 people before and after a UN-sponsored independence referendum in 1999.

Mr Gusmao had said that maintaining ties with Indonesia was more important than pursuing justice for those accused in the violence, which only stopped when international peacekeeping troops arrived in Timor Leste.

Prosecutors in the capital Dili are pursuing their own war crimes trials. They have indicted nearly 250 people, including the former chief of the Indonesian military, General Wiranto. Thirty people – mostly former militiamen – have been convicted.