Indonesia said today that reports the United States gave former president Suharto the go-ahead for the 1975 invasion of East Timor were no surprise and would not harm relations with the United States.
The invasion and ensuing 24-year occupation killed more than 200,000 people - a quarter of the population - through fighting, famine and disease as thousands of Timorese took arms against the Indonesian army.
"I do not see how that 1975 policy can have any link to our relationship with the US right now. There is no connection," Mr Wahid Supriyadi, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.
At the height of the Cold War in 1975, the United States - just out of the conflict in Vietnam - and vehement anti-communist Suharto thought communism could creep into the region via Timor following the power vacuum left by former colonial power Portugal's disorganised withdrawal.
These fears pushed then-US-president Mr Gerald Ford and State Secretary Mr Henry Kissinger to say they would understand Indonesia's invasion, according to newly declassified December 6th, 1975, documents.
But Mr Supriyadi also said he did not think the revelations would worsen links with East Timor, strained further after pro-Jakarta militias went on a bloody rampage in 1999.
"For Indonesia, that's history. Let bygones be bygones. Our commitment now is for the future . . . on how to build bilateral relations with East Timor," he said.