JAKARTA - CRITICALLY ill former Indonesian president Suharto, who has been hospitalised for two weeks, is not showing signs of getting better and remains on a ventilator, his doctors said on Thursday.

"General conditions have not shown improvement", the doctors said in a press release issued ahead of an expected briefing to reporters.

"Breathing is still being assisted by a breathing apparatus, the functions of the heart and lungs have not yet improved and there are still signs of a systemic infection", it said.

Mr Suharto, who ruled the world's fourth most populous nation for three decades, was first admitted to hospital on Jan 4 and suffered multiple organ failure a week later, when he was hooked up to a ventilator.

His condition has since been fluctuating on an almost daily basis.

Doctors said on Wednesday they had begun to try slowly weaning him off the ventilator, which they say puts him at greater risk of contracting infection, but warned his general condition remained unstable.

Suharto, one of Asia's political giants, stepped down in 1998 amid bloody nationwide riots and mass pro-democracy protests triggered initially by the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

He retreated to his family home in an upmarket Jakarta suburb, rarely venturing outside and managing to avoid criminal trial for massive corruption allegations by citing poor health.

Attempts to bring Suharto to justice for alleged human rights atrocities in East Timor, which he invaded in 1975, and far-flung Aceh and Papua, have also been stymied. -- AFP