Jim Mannion, Washington – The United States called off a military training exercise with Indonesia and is reviewing all other scheduled joint military activities because of concern over political unrest there, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday.

"The reasons we terminated this exercise at this time is because of the circumstances now prevailing in Indonesia," the spokesman said. "We thought it would be inappropriate to continue training at this time."

"Because of the prevailing situation we are going to conduct a policy level review of individual military activities," he said. "We will review all other US military activities currently planned in Indonesia and we will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to proceed," said the spokesman, who requested anonymity.

Dubbed "Balanced Iron," the exercise began May 1 and involved a static line parachute jump master course, navigation and low-level flight operations courses.

Some 95 US Special Forces troops based in Torii Station, Okinawa were supposed to take part in the exercise, but only 17 were in the country when the Pentagon decided to terminate it, the official said. It was scheduled to conclude May 20.

The decision to terminate the exercise followed calls by the White House for restraint and respect for human rights by Indonesian authorities in the face of escalating riots that have left as many as six dead this week.

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a protest by stone-throwing students in central Java, injuring at least 60 people in the worst violence during a day of demonstrations at universities across the country calling for an end to President Suharto's rule.

General Wiranto, the Indonesian military chief, sought to defuse the protests, telling students that their demands for political reform had been heard and urging them to end the demonstrations. But his appeals Thursday were ignored.

Although US military aid to Indonesia has been banned since 1992, the Pentagon has conducted joint training with elite Indonesian military units under a Joint Combined Exchange and Training (JCET) program.

The training programs have come under fire from US lawmakers and human rights activists who argue that the units receiving the training were among Indonesia's most notorious abusers of human rights. The Pentagon official strongly denied that the decision to pull out of the Balanced Iron exercise was intended as a protest against the government's handling of the crisis.

But he said, "It reflects our concern about conditions in Indonesia. Human rights is an important consideration and we believe programs like JCET and E-IMET (expanded International Military Education and Training) can be beneficial in that regard."

Since 1993, the US military has conducted 41 JCET training programs with the Indonesian military at a cost of 3.4 million dollars.