Jakarta – A coalition of Indonesian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on Thursday called on the country's main donors meeting here to determine their new aid pledge, to allow the government to slow down its privatisation program.

"We believe that privatisation should be slowed down, until a political consensus is achieved among the government of Indonesia, the parliamnent and civil society on a process that takes into account its impacts on the poor and most vulnerable," a statement by the coalition read out at the meeting said.

The coalition involved five NGOs including the International NGO Forum for Indonesia Development (INFID) whose executive director, Binny Buchori, read out the statement.

The World Bank, which chairs the Consultation Group on Indonesia (CGI) that groups Indonesia's main state and institutional donors, has criticized Jakarta for the slowness of its privatisation and sales of government-held assets.The World Bank and several other institutional donors have said that the privatisation program and the sales of government assets was an important source for fund for the cash-strapped government.

In their speech, the NGOs also criticised the government for failing "to show a sense of crisis and urgency," and added that the government has responded to criticism from the CGI in a general, vague and non-committal manner.

They also accused Jakarta of failing to address human rights violations in the country with any seriousness. "While there is a plan to implement a human rights court, we are of the opinion that the court still contains impunity elements," the statement said.

Officials have said that ad hoc human rights court, set up for specific cases of human rights violations, are expected to be in operation by the end of the year following the completion of training of its ad hoc judges and prosecutors.

It has so far singled out two cases of suspected gross human rights violations – the 1984 Tanjung Priok massacre in which troops shoot into a crowd of Muslim demonstrators and a massacre of East Timorese when the territory was still and Indonesian province.

The NGOs also pointed out that there was an increase in repression in the two resource rich provinces at the extremities of the archipelago, Aceh and Irian Jaya, where separatism was strong.

They also called for a transparent military budget, and a moratorium on large-scale logging saying that there had been no serious efforts in attacking the illegal logging which was rapidly depleting the country's forests.

The NGOs also called for "a more generous budget for basic social spending," to alleviate poverty.Citing data from the Urban Poor Consortium, a leading anti-poverty group, they said that the government had eradicated jobs for around 15,000 people between August and October this year.They also urged CGI creditors and donors to conduct an audit on their past loans to Indonesia.

Earlier on Thursday, National Development and Planning Minister, Kwik Kian Gie, told the CGI meeting that he could not guarantee fresh loans sought by his government would be safe from corruption.

The CGI, which groups bilateral as well as multilateral members including World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, will decide later Thursday on fresh loans to help cover Indonesia's 2002 budget deficit. Indonesia is seeking around 3.5 billion dollars in CGI loans to help cover next year's budget deficit of 42.2 trillion rupiah (3.9 billion dollars).