Across Asia: Indonesia

E Timor deaths re-examined

A former Indonesian army colonel has told a magazine that soldiers deliberately killed five Western journalists in East Timor in 1975 - contradicting the government's longstanding assertion that the deaths were accidental.

The explosive claim in the weekly Tempo magazine, published on Monday, further fueled tensions between Indonesia and Australia created in September when Australian federal police launched a war crimes investigation into the deaths in the East Timorese border town of Balibo in the weeks before Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony.