Two East Timorese winners of the Nobel peace prize have said the United Nations must set up an international tribunal to try those accused of human abuses during the last weeks of Indonesian rule over the territory.

Bishop Carlos Belo and Jose Ramos Horta, won the prize in 1996 for campaigning for the rights and independence of the East Timorese.

Calling for an international tribunal, Bishop Belo said: "Hopefully through the United Nations framework, these people should be taken into a tribunal like for Kosovo, for Bosnia, because the crimes committed here are really crimes against humanity."

"You saw our cities destroyed, everybody suffering without shelter, without anything, so those people must be taken to justice," Bishop Belo added.

Mr Horta, who shared the Nobel prize with Bishop Belo, said the former head of the Indonesian armed forces, General Wiranto, and other senior commanders should be made answerable for crimes against humanity.

"You cannot in this day and age, at the end of the 20th Century, plan an orderly destruction of a whole country, the abduction of thousands of people, the killing the rape, and get away with it with impunity," Mr Horta said.

"It would be an affront to humanity if Wiranto and the others retired peacefully and nothing happened," he added.

Finding the facts

Mass grave sites have already been uncovered in East Timor, though no authoritative figure has been given for the number of people who died in the last weeks of Indonesian rule over East Timor.

The UN has recently sent a fact finding mission to East Timor to investigate the alleged human rights abuses committed by the Indonesia military and pro-Jakarta militias in the period after the territory voted for independence in August. It will report to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

An Indonesian commission of inquiry into human rights violations has also launched an investigation.

Both inquiry teams have said gathered testimony pointed to the responsibility of senior army generals in planning and executing the violence that engulfed East Timor before Indonesia pulled out.

Though the Indonesian team has surprised many with its apparent honesty and willingness to criticises its own military, Bishop Belo dismissed its efforts.

"I do not have confidence in Indonesian institutions," he said.