Sydney – East Timorese president Xanana Gusmao says pursuing Indonesian generals through the courts for atrocities committed years ago won't provide justice.

Launching his book Timor Lives today in Sydney, Gusmao said the people of East Timor backed a fight for the truth and a just account of history.

"(But) we don't support too much the demand to put Indonesian generals in court. What we support is... to reveal the truth," Mr Gusmao said. "Another way to make justice is revealing the truth, revealing who is behind all the atrocities."

Mr Gusmao's remarks follow a call by the United Nations in June for an international tribunal to look into possible atrocities by Indonesian militia during East Timor's 1999 referendum.

More than 1,000 East Timorese were killed and hundreds of thousands fled their homes when pro-Jakarta militiamen, backed by the Indonesian military, went on a destructive rampage just days after the population voted for independence in a UN ballot.

After intense international pressure, Jakarta established a human rights tribunal in 2002 which tried 18 suspects, but only convicted one.

Today, Mr Gusmao, who led armed guerrillas against the Indonesian army and was later captured and imprisoned in Jakarta, said the East Timorese people wanted to move on. He said his country would risk all that it had fought for if it continued with dead-end tribunals.

"We can lose more if we... struggle to further something that would be very difficult to be achieved," he said. "It is in a practical way, a kind of justice that we are pursuing... we would like ideally to have everything solved but sometimes it is not practical."

Mr Gusmao said his book stood as testimony to the struggle East Timor endured to establish itself as a free and independent country.

"It is not a very easy task we have worked for. For 24 years to get independence and what we know about independence was only to be free," he said. "We never thought during the 24 years... we have to establish government, how to establish parliament, how to make clothes."