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Indonesia Refuses To Have Timika and East Timor Cases as a Condition of Resuming Indonesia-US Military Cooperation
Tuesday, 23 November, 2004 | 22:29 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:Indonesian government has refused to have the settlement of human rights violation in East Timor following the 1999 ballot and the murder of US citizens in Timika, Papua, in August 2002, as the main conditions in resuming military relations between Indonesia and the USA.

According to Indonesian Minister of Defense Juwono Sudarsono, these two cases should be taken care by Indonesian courts.

“We do not accept calls from outside parties to try the cases involving Indonesia based on their regulations,” Sudarsono told reporters at his office in Jakarta on Monday (22/11).

US President George Walker Bush offered Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono the opportunity of resuming US military cooperation with Indonesia, which has been halted for the last few years.

Bush made this offer during a bilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Santiago, Chile, on Saturday (20/11).

In addition to these two conditions, Bush also said he hoped that the funding and budget of the Indonesian defense ministry and the Indonesian Military (TNI) would be more transparent.

However, Sudarsono said that Indonesia, as a sovereign country, was entitled to review all conditions proposed by the US government.

If the Indonesian government thinks it is unnecessary to fulfill all conditions proposed by the USA, Indonesia will certainly seek supply opportunities of military and defense equipment from other countries.

According to Sudarsono, the US government often proposes human rights as its condition in holding cooperation with other countries.

However, the US itself is often involved in human rights violations such those taking place in Iraq.

“The US has often made worse violations than those that took place in Indonesia,” Sudarsono stated.

According to plan, Sudarsono will fly to the USA and lobby the US Congress to approve the resumption of military relations with Indonesia next March or April.

Sudarsono said that he and TNI Chief Gen. Endriartono Sutarto have agreed to reorganize businesses within the TNI and the Ministry of Defense.

However, this would require time as it is still in the transition period.

“If the Ministry of Defense and TNI headquarters (HQ) wish to be the reform pioneers in terms of the accountability of the state budget, then let’s do it properly, continuously and in stages,” he said.

A working committee of the Ministry of Defense and the TNI HQ is currently making an action plan to reorganize the TNI under the Ministry of Defense.

The discussion shall include the secretary-general of the defense ministry and the TNI general chief of staff. (Dimas Adityo-Koran Tempo)