Jakarta - The former Indonesian military chief, Gen Wiranto, has broken a week-long silence to hit back at a human rights panel which implicated him in atrocities in East Timor. In an interview with Singapore's Straits Times published yesterday, Gen Wiranto said he would not accept personal or legal responsibility for any crimes committed by his troops.
He has resisted pressure from President Abdurrahman Wahid - who is on an overseas tour - to resign as senior security minister after the panel, set up to investigate the violence in East Timor last September, implicated him in the terror.
Gen Wiranto cited as an example the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. "When one of the US officers in Vietnam during the Vietnam war killed a number of innocent villagers . . . I don't think the commander-in-chief of US troops in Vietnam, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked to be legally responsible," he said.