Banda Aceh – Indonesia wants the United States to lift a long-standing ban on weapon sales to its military, arguing that it could respond more effectively to disasters such as last month's tsunami if its forces were better equipped.
But rights groups and some supporters of the ban in the US Congress say Jakarta is using the disaster to twist the facts and unfairly pressure the United States. They say the 23-year-old ban should remain in force until Indonesia addresses unresolved human rights violations.
The debate forms part of the backdrop of a visit by US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to the tsunami disaster zone this weekend. He is scheduled to visit Thailand Saturday before traveling to the badly damaged Indonesian city of Banda Aceh and then to Jakarta for talks Sunday with Indonesia 's defense ministers and other government officials.
Indonesian officials say a lack of spare parts left 17 of its fleet of 24 American-made C-130 cargo planes grounded when the December 26 earthquake and tsunami hit Sumatra island, preventing it from reaching many remote areas cut off when roads and bridges were destroyed. Without the US ban, the planes may have been fit to fly, the say.
The US military and other foreign troops have spearheaded efforts to ferry relief supplies to hard hit areas on Sumatra's northwest coast and evacuating survivors.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said during a visit last week to the disaster zone that the US government would begin allowing spare parts for C-130s into Indonesia.
Indonesian officials are calling on Washington to go further and lift the ban on weapon sales and combat training. "For us, it's a question of the readiness and capability of the military to respond to any crisis throughout the country," said Dino Djalal, the spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "The embargo one way or another has hampered that ability."
Supporters of the ban say Indonesia is lying about its C-130s parts to curry favor with the United States. They say Indonesia has been allowed to buy the C-130 spare parts under American law since 2002 and before that bought them on the black market.
"We told the Indonesians we would sell them these parts four years ago, but they chose to buy them elsewhere," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "Yet they have continued to falsely blame our law for denying them this equipment. It is a myth, used to push for a relaxation of our human rights conditions, so they can use these aircraft for combat purposes," Leahy, of Vermont, said.
The United States has pledged US$350 million to help the dozen countries hit by tsunami disaster, which killed more than 157,000 people and left millions homeless.
The ban was first imposed in 1991 when Indonesian troops gunned down unarmed protesters in East Timor, killing more than 250 people. Eight years later, the ban was tightened after Indonesian troops and their proxy militias killed 1,500 East Timorese after the half island territory voted for independence in a UN-sponsored independence referendum.
President George W. Bush's administration has campaigned hard for lifting the ban. Wolfowitz – a former ambassador to Jakarta – has argued that normalizing relations is justified by the need to help Indonesia fight Islamic militants who have been blamed for a string of deadly terrorists bombings the past four years.
But Congress has resisted, in part because Indonesia has failed to jail any military leaders allegedly responsible for the 1999 Timor violence.
Jakarta also has been criticized for not cooperating fully in the investigation into the killing of two American teachers in Papua province in 2002 – a shooting the military says was carried out by separatist rebels but that rights group say was the work of the army.
In November, Congress enacted a law allowing weapons sales to the Indonesian navy if the secretary of state approves it. The conditions on the army, however, are much stricter and include accounting the East Timor violence and the Papua murders.
"There is nothing wrong with US soldiers and Indonesian soldiers working side by side to aid the victims of the tsunami," said Leahy, who wrote the law enacting the ban.
"But the Indonesian military remains a corrupt, abusive institution in need of reform," he said. "Our law gives them a choice – show that you want to reform and we will help you. But if you continue to flaunt the rule of law there will be a price."