Jakarta – Lawyers for the Indonesian armed forces said Monday they have agreed to settle their dispute with the Washington Post over a report that implicated senior officers in plans for an attack in Papua province.
Frans Hendra Winarta, representing military chief General Endriartono Sutarto, said both sides "in principle have agreed a settlement" and that documents were to be signed Monday with lawyers for the paper's Jakarta bureau.
In the settlement, the Post "agrees to publish a retraction of their previous article and states that they did not have substantial evidence to back up that article," Winarta told AFP. Local lawyers for the newspaper could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Post, citing a US government official and another US source, said senior Indonesian military officials had discussed an unspecified operation against the Freeport mine before an ambush of Freeport employees was staged last August 31. It said Sutarto was at the meeting whose apparent aim was to discredit separatist guerrillas of the Free Papua Movement. Two American teachers and an Indonesian were killed in the ambush when gunmen opened fire on buses carrying them near the gold and copper mine. Sutarto has denied attending any such meeting.
The retraction for the November 4 article will be published before February 28 and printed on the paper's front page, Winarta said.
Army officials have blamed the ambush on Kelly Kwalik, a leader of the Free Papua Movement. Kwalik has denied any involvement. Papua's deputy police chief, Brigadier General Raziman Tarigan, in November quoted a witness as saying that Kopassus special forces soldiers were suspected of involvement in the attack. He was later transferred to Jakarta.
FBI officers have travelled to Papua at least twice for what officials described as "monitoring" the Indonesian police investigation into the shooting. Reports of any military involvement could seriously undermine US efforts to resume full military ties with Indonesia, which have been restricted since 1999 because of the army-backed violence in East Timor.