Rumsfeld Indonesia visit cements military ties
(AP)
Updated: 2006-06-06 21:48
"MODERN AND PROFESSIONAL"
Some U.S. Congressmen and human rights activists oppose the resumption of
military ties because they say Jakarta's army has not broken with abusive
practices blamed for tens of thousands of deaths in East Timor, a former
Portuguese colony which became independent from Indonesia in 1999.
"Further normalizing the military relationship with Indonesia will only
undermine its democratic reform and efforts to achieve accountability for past
human rights violations in East Timor, West Papua and elsewhere," said the East
Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), a U.S. rights group.
But a senior Pentagon official said the rupture of contacts with Indonesian
troops meant lost opportunities for American trainers to "help them be modern
and professional."
"Our training involves civil-military relations, the laws of war," said the
official. "A huge proportion of it is to bring them up to reasonable standards
of conduct."
Asked by reporters if Indonesia was willing to join the U.S.-led
Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a 60-nation group formed to stop the
transfer of missiles, nuclear materials and other banned weapons, Sudarsono said
Jakarta had "sovereignty concerns" and needed to study the plan more.
"Perhaps we can agree on a limited framework of cooperation on an ad hoc
basis," he told a news conference. Rumsfeld called that position "not
unreasonable at all" and his aide said the PSI was a flexible exercise rather
than a formal treaty.
Before his talks in Jakarta, Rumsfeld had visited Singapore and Vietnam. In
Hanoi on Monday, he said U.S.-Vietnamese ties had reached a new level and the
former battlefield enemies would boost military exchanges and training.
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