East Timor's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has spent three years collecting evidence from thousands of witnesses about Indonesia's 25 year occupation of East Timor.
Its 2,500- page final report has been handed to the United Nations.
In it, the commission says that Australia "contributed significantly to denying the people of Timor-Leste their right to self-determination before and during the Indonesian occupation".
The commission said in order to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, Australia violated its obligations under international law and backed the bigger neighbour's push to take over East Timor in 1975.
It claimed Australia also was influenced by a desire to get the most it could out of maritime boundary negotiations affecting oil and gas reserves.
"The commission finds that Australian policy towards Indonesia and Timor Leste (in the lead-up to the invasion) was influenced ... by an assessment that it would achieve a more favourable outcome to the negotiations on the maritime boundary in the Timor (Sea) if it was dealing with Indonesia, rather than with Portugal or an independent Timor-Leste on the issue."
Downer mentioned
The report made special mention of the role of Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, prior to the vote for independence in 1999.
It said Mr Downer lobbied Indonesia to delay the poll because it was in Australia's interests for it to remain part of the archipelago.
"The commission finds that, even when (former president BJ) Habibie was moving towards his decision to offer the East Timorese a choice between remaining part of Indonesia and independence, the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer made it clear that his government believed that it should be several years before the East Timorese exercised their right to make that choice and that it would be preferable from an Australian point of view if Timor-Leste remained legally part of Indonesia.”
It went on "The actions of the government of Australia in supporting Indonesia's attempted forcible integration of Timor-Leste was in violation of its duties, under the general principles of international law, to support and refrain from undermining the legitimate right of the East Timorese people to self-determination and to take positive action to facilitate the realisation of this right."
Reaction to report
Labor's Foreign Affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, described the revelations as "remarkable" given Mr Downer's public crusade for East Timor's independence.
He said the Federal Opposition would question Mr Downer in Parliament about whether he lobbied Jakarta to delay East Timor's independence vote six years ago.
Meanwhile a spokesman for Alexander Downer said the Government hasn't received a copy of the report.
He said the Government's position on the issue was clearly articulated at the time and Australia supported reconciliation and an act of self determination for the East Timorese.
The spokesman said the timing of the independence vote was always going to be negotiated between Dili and Jakarta.