Jakarta – The US government, under President Bush has shown a renewed willingness to open the access for military equipment and military training to Indonesia as long as the Indonesian government commits to setting up and executing the trials in a professional manner, for those officers and leaders involved in murder, rape, torture, arson and gross human rights abuses in East Timor.
The Indonesian government has also been urged to pave the way for the repatriation of East Timorese refugees from Indonesias territory of West Timor, part of NTT province, to their homeland in East Timor.
In its press release, the US government admitted it was pressured to terminate most of the military service and equipment for Indonesia in 1999. The restriction was part of the limitation imposed on Indonesia by the liberal Clinton administration in the US government which is typically more cooperative with the International community, which called for sanctions after the East Timor slaughter.
The restriction was prompted by the massacre, looting and destruction that took place in September 1999 in East Timor which was orchestrated and planned months in advance by the highest ranking members of the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI), including General Wiranto and deposed Lt. General Prabowo.
Other Indonesian military groups, POLRI specifically, who was given the mandate by the UN to provide security, were uncooperative and unprofessional at best and actually participated in the violence and looting in some cases.
The US hopes there will be a positive and concrete response from the Indonesian government so that the two countries can re-establish military relations, US Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard said in the release. Which might possibly be diplomatic-eze for; we want the world to forget about human rights and law, so we can all re-start the business of making lots of money by buying and selling weapons to each other.
In 1999, the US Congress ratified a law especially designed to curb the access by the Indonesian government for military equipment and training. It also mentions the conditions that Indonesia must meet or exceed to re-establish the military relations.
The restriction – called the Leahy Amendment – requires Indonesia to show commitment by cooperating with the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) in the probe and trial of military leaders responsible for human rights abuses in East Timor.
If the Indonesian government can not meet the requirements, the US government, by law is not able to provide military equipment and training for Indonesia, he added.
In September last year, the US partially lifted its restriction on the purchase of spare parts for non-lethal military items such as the air transport plane, the Hercules C-130. The Hercules C-130 aircraft has become important in the distribution of food supplies throughout the Indonesian archipelago.
Quickly after attending the commemoration of the 55th anniversary of the Air Force, President Abdurrahman Wahid criticized the US for its embargo on weapons sales to Indonesia.
But what Wahid did not understand is that in the US there are laws, and Congress passed a law banning sales to Indonesia until certain conditions were met, so no amount of criticism or public opinion can actually change the laws by the US congress on this issue.
The bigger question may be; why does Wahid actually not know what the conditions are, and does the US have such poor communication with him that the embassy needs to tell him via the mass media just what the conditions are? Wahid then went on to urge military officials to procure arms elsewhere to deal with a threat to the countrys unity.
We should not give in to intimidation by anyone. We dont need to depend on one country. We have to be able to carry out the diversification of aircraft to defend our nation, he said.