WHEN Mary Robinson comes to sift the evidence of war crimes in East Timor she would do well to examine the files at the YayasanHAK human rights group and Tapol, the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign.

The Indonesian military operation, relying less and less on well-armed proxy militias, was planned at the highest military level since before President BJ Habibie's January 27th announcement of a referendum on self-determination, Tapol - which means political prisoner - reports have been saying since before East Timor became an international story of horror.

London-based Tapol has named those it says are the main players. Unlike Gen Wiranto, the army chief and Defence Minister, all have Kopassus, or special forces, experience.

Perhaps this is why the minister was never able to act out his assurance to Jose Ramos Horta, the resistance representative, that he could shut down the militia violence in two days if he cared to.

Gen Wiranto's role remains mysterious and his future uncertain. His lounge-boy rendering of the song Feelings in answer to a question about how he felt towards the East Timorese people, as they were being hunted and murdered last weekend, provided a powerful image of contempt.

It seemed to confirm an underlying Javanese military view of the East Timorese as third-rate people who don't deserve space on the earth.

Back in January the army chief quickly expressed support for President Habibie's initiative in organising a referendum which held the promise of ridding Jakarta of its "pebble in the shoe" after 25 years of diplomatic pain.

He was the President's man who came out of last year's anti Suharto protests with a professional soldier image, reminiscent of Gen Fidel Ramos of the Philippines. He was rewarded with the defence portfolio and now sees himself as the next vice-president.

But a powerful faction in his high command backed the operation to subvert self-determination of the East Timorese, according to Australian intelligence sources cited by the Australian Financial Review last July.

This group was made up of government ministers and East Timor veterans, officers with commercial vested interests in keeping East Timor Indonesian. The Review said its source confirmed "beyond doubt that some of the most powerful elements in the Indonesian government are determined to covertly subvert the President's policy."

It seems this is no mere rogue element.

Maj Gen Adam Dimiri, head of the military area that includes East Timor - Udayana IX in Denpassar, Bali - soon held a meeting of militia leaders and promised logistical support, including weapons for 2,000 men, according to Tapol.

The militias are under the nominal control of large East Timorese landowners such as Joao and Jose Tavares da Silva. Lower down are Eurico Guterres, leader of the Dilibased Aitarak (Thorn), and their spokesman, Basilio Araujo.

The general told a later meeting of officers in Dili that the purpose of the operation was to: obliterate the National Council for Timorese Resistance; destroy the peace process, rendering a UN-managed referendum impossible; and to terrorise the population, creating the illusion of a civil war, says Tapol.

THE strategy was known initially as Operasi Sapu Jagad - Sanskrit for Global Clean-Sweep Operation. It was reminiscent of Operasi Komodo (a god-like dragon), a 1975 plan which destabilised a governing coalition, creating a "civil war" which gave Indonesia its pretext for invading to fill a vacuum it said the former Portuguese colonialists left.

The Habibie announcement in January had angered a military elite that is proud of having quelled separatism, communism and popular protest since 1949, and before that for winning independence. Since then ABRI, or TNI (the Indonesian army) as it is now known, has never won a war against an outside enemy. It has been an army of repression. But the military elite feels it has a blood investment in East Timor of perhaps 50,000 soldiers' lives.

The job of overseeing the dirty war operation, which has been likened to the CIA's Phoenix programme in Vietnam of eliminating supporters and leaders, was given to MajGen Zacky Anwar Makarim, according to Tapol.

When Indonesia appointed, under its May 5th UN accord with Portugal, a task force to represent its interests in the campaign, the major general was put in charge of security. He also had the key role of liaison officer with Unamet, the UN mission in East Timor. I was told in Dili in the days before the August 30th ballot by Mr Dino Djalal, the task force's spokesman, that Zacky didn't give interviews.

The Australian reported in July that Col Tono Suratman, then military commander in East Timor, and Brig Gen Mahidin Simbolon, a previous incumbent, were present at a meeting to discuss Global Clean Sweep.

But heavier weights of the group defying Indonesia's first civilian president included the retired former defence minister, Maj Gen "Benny" Murdani, Tapol says. One of the main leaders of the 1975 invasion, Gen Murdani in 1990 addressed the issue of Timorese separatism: "Don't dream of having a state of Timtim . . . If you try to make your own state . . . it will be crushed . . . There have been bigger rebellions . . . than the small number calling themselves Fretilin, or whoever their sympathisers are here. We will crush them all! I repeat, we will crush them all!"

Another name from the era of President (General) Suharto associated with this group is that of the former dictator's son in law, Lieut Gen Prabowo. He and Gen Murdani are alleged to have contributed $2 million to the terror campaign.

Others named by Tapol include Gen Try Sutrisno, Gen Suharto's last vice president, and Lieut Gen Yunus Yosfiah, President Habibie's Information Minister, who still has to deny frequent allegations that he was implicated in the 1975 murder of five foreign journalists at Balibo. They are believed to have been about to warn of the Indonesian invasion.

After Suharto's fall in May 1998, Gen Prabowo was sacked by Gen Wiranto for his part in violently putting down anti-Suharto protests, which left about 1,000 dead. For a time it was feared Gen Prabowo would mount a coup.

As rumours swept Jakarta this week of a bloodless coup against President Habibie, the armed forces commander took pains to dismiss the stories. But we may not have heard the last of Gen Prabowo and his comrades.