James Woodford – The rapidly expanding role of the Defence Force in training Indonesian soldiers, including crack special forces, risks associating Australia with human rights abuses, a senior defence official at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta has warned. The Indonesian Special Forces, Kopassus, have played a leading role in military operations in East Timor and were used to protect President Soeharto's palace during political riots in Jakarta two years ago.

The warning by the defence attache to the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Brigadier Jim Molan, comes as the Indonesian military is increasingly likely to become involved in suppressing rioting and political dissent sparked by the deepening economic crisis.

Brigadier Molan, who played a leading role in setting up the training operations, revealed that in the lead-up to the signing of the Australia-Indonesia Agreement on Maintaining Security in 1995 the army had been authorised to work with the Indonesian Army by first setting up links with Kopassus. The subsequent co-operation has been so successful that Australia has replaced the United States – which suspended military training after the 1991 Dili massacre – as Indonesia's closest defence partner and supplier of training.

However, in a forthcoming publication of the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Journal, Brigadier Molan identifies potential problems, including:

The risk of association with any internal Indonesian human rights problems caused by a military force that can be linked in some way to the Australian military.

Confusing traditional friends such as the US and Britain who are taking a more aggressive stand on some human rights issues, particularly East Timor, than is Australia, whose ability to raise such questions "may now be considered circumspect".

Complications in our developing relations with China if the view is taken by Beijing that the co-operation is contributing to a security arrangement aimed at establishing an anti-Chinese coalition.

Brigadier Molan stressed that he believed the issue could be managed successfully, but said it would "require particular management attention". The head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Professor Paul Dibb, says that if something does go wrong in Indonesia in the coming months and protesters are killed then there may be serious consequences for Australia.

But Professor Dibb, who was a senior Department of Defence official at the time the links were being established, also argues that the involvement has been positive and vital to Australia's security.

It was also appropriate to work with the Indonesian Army because it was the most powerful and influential group in the country.

The director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Mr Alan Dupont, said the defence engagement had not been well co-ordinated in its early stages but had improved greatly since. "But nevertheless the Government needs to sell this more effectively to the broader Australian public," he said.

A spokesman for the Minister for Defence, Mr McLachlan, said the Government "would not offer views on matters like that". "They are very much his [Brigadier Molan's] views and not necessarily those of the Government."

However the Herald has learnt that drafts of Brigadier Molan's paper were submitted for comment to the Defence Department.

[This item is particularly interesting in that the "risks" to Australia and/or its army are defined only in terms of Australia's international image and economic interests. While referring to the "likelihood" that human rights abuses may occur (rather than have and continue to), there is no suggestion that this in itself is a problem for Australia - James Balowski.]