The remains will be dumped at sea unless relatives of the deceased intervene.

The Christian graves at Bidadari Cemetery will make way for a 12,000 unit high-rise development. The plan has infuriated the RSL which has demanded a list of all the Australian dead at Bidadari.

RSL Victorian president Bruce Ruxton said Apr 13 that Singapore authorities "couldn't give a stuff" about graves. "They wouldn't care about a few bones," he said. "If there's any graves of soldiers there, they have to be reinterred. We want to know if there's any servicemen there."

Mr Ruxton will write to Singapore's Housing and Development Board to demand a grave list. Singapore authorities admitted World War II servicemen's graves could be among those earmarked to go.

But they said they had no way of knowing if the graves held civilian or military dead.

A Singapore law ministry spokesman said the remains would be exhumed, cremated and dumped at sea unless family of the deceased contacted Singapore's Housing and Development Board. They could then rebury them elsewhere.

Four families of Australians buried in Bidadari have already contacted Singaporean officials. A source at the High Commission in Singapore said at least two Australian Diggers were buried at Bidadari.

The Diggers' relatives had asked the remains not be touched when other military graves were reinterred in the 1950s at Kranji War Cemetery.

Excavators will start digging up the cemetery's 140,000 graves in December.

The cemetery operated from 1908 to 1972 and spokesman for the Housing Development Board Lee Kwok Kiong said "the records are bad and may not be very accurate".

"It could be the case that some soldiers were not recorded," he said. "We can't say for sure that there's no Australian soldiers."

Singapore's law ministry is overseeing the exhumation and ministry spokesman Loo Lin Chua said there were "around 80" Australian graves at Bidadari.

"I'm not able to tell you whether they're soldiers or not military personnel," he said. "I can't tell from the list. "If we look at the history of the cemetery, it could be, because it comes from the war period."

Australia's Office of War Graves is not commenting on the matter. A spokesman for Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Scott said there were no Australian records on the matter. Inquiries from relatives should be directed to Singapore's Housing and Development Board.

Relatives would have to decide where they want remains reinterred.

Inquiries from relatives should be directed to Singapore's Housing and Development Board at: Tower B, 3rd Storey, HDB Centre, 3451, Jalan Bukit, Merah, Singapore 159459, Republic of Singapore.

An inquiry form can also be obtained on the board's website: www.hdb.gov.sg