Jakarta governor not involved in killings - Australia

JAKARTA, June 8 (Reuters) Australia's defence chief said today a former Indonesian general who was served a court summons during a visit to Sydney last month was not involved in the 1975 killing of five Australia-based journalists in East Timor.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso, who served in East Timor at the start of the Indonesian occupation of the territory in 1975, told him he and his troops were not in the district where the reporters were killed.

''He was nowhere near Balibo at the time of that unfortunate incident. Indeed he was with another team in another town in East Timor,'' Houston told reporters after meeting Sutiyoso in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

''I accept his explanation and I have never doubted his innocence,'' he said.

Sutiyoso said last month two New South Wales police officers had barged into his hotel room in Sydney during an official visit and asked him to sign an invitation to testify in an inquest into the murder of the five journalists.

Indonesia lodged a formal diplomatic protest but the row was defused after the Australian ambassador in Jakarta and the New South Wales leader apologised.

Houston said he expressed regret to Sutiyoso for ''the unacceptable circumstances''.

''The governor is a long-standing friend of Australia. Those circumstances will never happen again,'' said Houston, who was Sutiyoso's classmate at an Australian military staff college in 1990.

The Sydney inquest into the death of the five Australia-based journalists heard they were deliberately gunned down by Indonesian soldiers.

In final submissions to the inquest last month, Mark Tedeschi, the counsel assisting the coroner, said the journalists were killed in Balibo to stop them reporting news of Indonesian military actions.

Official Indonesian reports have blamed the deaths on October 16, 1975 on crossfire, as Indonesian forces entered East Timor in an incursion ahead of a full-scale invasion of the territory in December of the same year.

Houston is in Indonesia to meet armed forces chief Joko Suyanto and Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono. He said he met Sutiyoso as an ''old friend'' who beat him at a tennis competition in Australia.

REUTERS KK BD1259