Jakarta – Indonesia missed an opportunity to restore military ties with the United States by failing to make its soldiers accountable for abuses in East Timor, the outgoing US ambassador said Monday.
"I consider it a misgiving on my part that I'm leaving without having normalized mil-mil relations because it was there to have," Ambassador Ralph Boyce told reporters.
"So that's a regret on my part but it's not a regret because we didn't do something. It's a regret because the Indonesians didn't take the opportunity," said Boyce, who ends a three-year term here on October 22 before taking up a new posting in Bangkok.
United States officials have repeatedly expressed their disappointment at the outcome of Jakarta's human rights tribunals set up to try military, police and civilian officials accused of abuses in connection with East Timor's bloody 1999 separation from Indonesia.
In August, the Indonesian supreme court overturned the ad hoc tribunal's conviction of four Indonesian security officers, meaning that no members of the security forces were found guilty of rights abuses in East Timor.
Only two of the 18 original defendants stand convicted, and both are East Timorese civilians. Adam Ereli, deputy spokesman of the State Department, has said the process "was seriously flawed and lacked credibility."
Military cooperation with the United States was sharply reduced in 1999 when Congress in Washington passed the so-called Leahy Amendment during the East Timor turmoil.
Under the Leahy Amendment, assistance is suspended until certain conditions are met, including effective measures to bring to justice members of the armed forces and militia groups suspected of rights abuses.
"After three years we have not in fact substantively changed our relationship with [the Indonesian Armed Forces] all that much because the much-touted East Timor ad hoc trials on human rights violations didn't produce anything," Boyce said.
The United Nations alleges that the Indonesian military and militias it created murdered at least 1,400 people before and after East Timorese voted in August 1999 for independence. They also deported about 200,000 people to Indonesian West Timor and destroyed close to 70 percent of all buildings in the territory, according to UN prosecutors.
Restoration of military equipment assistance depends on accountability over the East Timor abuses while funds for military education have hinged on another case, the ambush killing of two Americans in Papua province two years ago.
Indonesia expressed hope in June that the Papua case was no longer an obstacle after the US decided to charge Anthonius Wamang, a Papuan separatist rebel, with the killings.
The decision vindicated the Indonesian military following allegations they were involved, the Indonesian foreign ministry said.