Heru Andriyanto – Attorney General Hendarman Supandji is backing a House of Representatives plan to remove the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK)'s prosecutorial powers.

"I fully support the plan. The task of prosecuting should become the sole authority of the prosecutor's office," Hendarman told reporters on Friday.

"According to the law (on public prosecution), prosecutors are members of a single entity and the top leadership of prosecution lies in the hands of the attorney general," said Hendarman.

A working committee in the House of Representatives said recently it was seeking to limit the KPK's authority to investigate and arrest corruption suspects. The committee, which is working on the controversial anti-corruption law, said that allowing the KPK to prosecute leads to overlapping authorities among law enforcement agencies.

According to the 2002 law on the KPK, the commission can initiate investigations and bring cases to the Anti-Corruption Court.

Since the commission recruits state prosecutors from the AGO for limited periods to carry out prosecutions, Hendarman said the move would not impede the KPK's work. "Remember that the prosecutors who work for the KPK also belong to the AGO," Hendarman said.

Non-governmental groups have criticized the committee's plan as weakening the anti-graft effort, however, arguing that a powerful body with sweeping powers is necessary to fight the country's ingrained corruption.

"We are wondering if the AGO is behind the ongoing attempt at the House to reduce the KPK's authority," Emerson Yuntho from Indonesia Corruption Watch said recently.

The two organizations have sometimes been at odds in recent years. In March 2008 the KPK arrested a senior AGO official in a bribery scandal that caused two of Hendarman's deputies to be demoted.

In May, the AGO took the unusual step of announcing that then-KPK chairman Antasari Azhar was a suspect In a murder case before the police did.

Analysts say the murder case, a current police investigation into alleged bribery at the KPK and the House deliberation of the anti-corruption bill have put the KPK in its must vulnerable position since its estab lishment in 2002.