Canberra – Defence Minister John Moore today defended the holding of joint military exercises with Indonesia's armed forces (ABRI following allegations about military operations within Indonesia.

This month the US-based Human Rights Watch added their voice to concerns about the actions of the military forces, saying troops sent to quell violence in rioting in Ambon only added to the trouble by using lead bullets rather than non-lethal crowd control methods.

Mr Moore today told Network Seven that Australia did not plan to resume joint operations with Indonesia's security services operation and was only taking part in exercises with ABRI.

"The actions in terms of the exercises taking place at the present moment are with ABRI themselves. What we suspended were operations with ... their security services operation," Mr Moore said.

"We did that back in October last year and there are no plans at the moment to re-invigorate those.

"We think that ABRI is a very important part of the whole Indonesian nation and that our training with them can help Indonesian troops in understanding the role of democracy in the armed forces."

After a three day meeting in Indonesia this month between the ABRI and Australian high commands, a senior Indonesian military officer foreshadowed the possibility the two forces could work together on East Timor.

But Mr Moore emphasised Australia was unlikely to become involved in any force which required direct military action, for example to disarm pro-integrationist forces. "It's very unlikely that we would be involved in a force that would be peace enforcers; it would be more likely that we would be involved in a United Nations effort where we would be peace keepers," he said.

"I think if we went in there and it turns into a very unstable situation in East Timor as peace enforcers you would come away with some losses."

Mr Moore also downplayed a role in Indonesia or East Timor for the new second battalion just created in Darwin as a rapid response unit.

"The only way in which we would actively be putting those in would be in a joint operation in a peacekeeping sense which would probably be run by the United Nations or maybe a collection of friendly nations associated with this area or some request from the Indonesians themseleves," he said.

"We don't anticipate at this present moment any move into those areas under the present circumstances."