Washington – US-supplied aircraft played a crucial role in enabling the Indonesian military to crush East Timorese resistance to its invasion and occupation of the territory in the late 1970s, according to a report by an East Timor commission.

The Indonesian offensives "resulted in the severe suffering and hardship to tens of thousands of civilians sheltering in the interior at the time," the report said.

Indonesia, fearing a leftist takeover in East Timor following the end of Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, invaded the territory in late 1976 and subsequently annexed it.

According to the report, the United States felt compelled to support Indonesia's military government. The support included that of the Carter administration (1977-1981), which had made protection of human rights a centerpiece of its foreign policy, the report noted.

Efforts to reach Richard Holbrooke, a former UN ambassador who served as the Carter administration's top official for East Asia, were unsuccessful.

Successive US administrations all consistently stressed "the overriding importance of the relationship with Indonesia and the supposed irreversibility of the Indonesian takeover," the report said.

In 1977, reports began to emerge from East Timor about Indonesia's use of US-supplied OV-10 Bronco aircraft amid claims that they may have been used for spraying chemical defoliants.

The US Embassy in Jakarta responded to questions from the US Congress on the subject by saying it had received "no reports that Indonesians have used chemical sprays in areas" aligned with the resistance movement.

Indonesia's use of OV-10s in East Timor "has thus far been limited to machine guns, rockets, and perhaps bombs," said the recently declassified cable to the US State Department.

The report was prepared by East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR). Copies were distributed by the Washington-based National Security Archive, a research institute on international affairs. In preparing the report, East Timorese officials received assistance from a number of foreign governments, including the United States, and international non-govenrmental organizations.

According to the study, US officials generally declined to acknowledge the culpability of the Indonesian military for the large number of fatalities in East Timor. "Instead," the report said, "they maintained that the deaths were due to drought, an argument that the commssion finds to have been without merit."

East Timor was granted independence from Indonesia in May 2002. The report noted that US President Bill Clinton in 1999 persuaded Indonesia to accept deployment of an international force on East Timor to help end "massive" rights violations in the territory committed by Indonesian forces and pro-Jakarta groups.

In so doing, Clinton demonstrated the "considerable leverage" that the United States could have exerted earlier had the will been there, the study said.