Jakarta – Indonesia has appointed two prosecutors, whom activists allege to be corrupt, to oversee graft investigations as part of its crackdown on corruption, an anti-graft group said Tuesday.

Indonesian Corruption Watch activists slammed the appointments and called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has talked tough on corruption in an election year, to revoke them immediately.

"As the country's leader, President Yudhoyono has to revoke the mandate given to the two corrupt prosecutors," Corruption Watch activist Emerson Yuntho said.

"The attorney general's office is a tool of his administration in the fight against corruption. He has a responsibility to control his subordinates."

Prosecutors Kemas Yahya Rahman and Muhammad Salim were named recently as supervisors of corruption investigations conducted by the attorney general's office, or AGO, which is itself tainted by numerous corruption scandals.

Both men were reprimanded and dismissed from their previous posts in the AGO last year after the country's powerful anti-corruption watchdog made public secretly tapped phone conversations between them and a corrupt businesswoman.

The scandal saw another senior prosecutor, Urip Tri Gunawan, sentenced to 20 years' jail in September for accepting a $660,000 bribe from the woman, who was also jailed.

"If the president fails to annul the nomination of the two prosecutors, his administration will lose public confidence in his campaign against corruption," Yuntho said.

Yudhoyono promised to stamp out corruption when he was elected in 2004 but Indonesia remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Clean government is shaping up as a key issue ahead of presidential polls in July.