The Jakarta-based director of an international analysts' group says Indonesian authorities have threatened to expel her because of her reports on the country.

Sidney Jones of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said "serious accusations" were made against her on Tuesday during a meeting between the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) and a parliamentary security affairs committee.

In a statement she quoted Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda as saying Wednesday that ICG's reports were biased and that the government had the right to expel whoever it chose.

Jones said authorities had refused to extend work permits for ICG's foreign staff, based on a complaint which they refused to specify. "How can we answer charges when the charges are made in secret?" She said she had been trying unsuccessfully for two months to meet BIN director Hendropriyono to discuss her group's work.

Foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said Wirayuda had not alleged bias but "wondered about the authoritativeness of some of her reports," including those on Aceh. He said the government is not in the business of removing people from the country but added that the foreign ministry has nothing to do with Jones's work permit. "This is a classic case of someone trying to make a martyr of one's self," Natalegawa said. "They are creating a crisis which is non-existent between the Indonesian government and ICG."

ICG's Jakarta office, one of 19 around the world, has produced reports on Aceh, Papua, Maluku, Poso, police and military reform, decentralisation and terrorism.

Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, head of the parliamentary security committee, quoted an intelligence agency report as saying about 20 NGO workers including Jones could "disturb security" during the current presidential election period. Baharuddin, quoted by Kompas newspaper, said his committee encouraged the agency to ban them from the country. "The majority of the commission said that a ban should be imposed on anyone, such as Sidney Jones, who is strongly indicated to have engineered and provoked anti-military activities and cooperated with several NGOs here," he said.

Jones told AFP she believed the ICG's reports on Aceh and Papua, where separatist sentiment is strong, had provoked the expulsion threat. She described it as a worrying development for freedom of expression.

"These kinds of evictions were common in the Suharto period but are much less common now. I fervently hope this expulsion is just a threat and does not turn into reality," she said. "If it does I think it's a throwback to a darker era."

Jones, a US citizen, worked for Human Rights Watch for 14 years, based in New York. She also ran a United Nations human rights programme in East Timor from December 1999 to July 2000. She arrived in Indonesia in May 2002.

ICG president Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, said in a statement he has total confidence in Jones and the Jakarta team. "I think the Indonesian government should take into account that if we are expelled from Indonesia, this will do far more damage to Indonesia's reputation than ICG's," he said.