Jakarta – Indonesia's armed forces are an "inseparable part" of the country's reform drive and will not tolerate threats to the process, an influential general said here Wednesday.

"ABRI (the armed forces) will be an inseparable part of the reform process and any action which threatens reform must be stopped," Lieutenant General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said.

Yudhoyono, head of the military's social and political affairs, was speaking to foreign diplomats, journalists and businessmen at an executive lunch here as the army ordered troops back into troubled Aceh province. Refering to outbreaks of unrest in some provinces since the onset of the economic crisis and the fall of ex-president Suharto in May, he said ABRI was determined to prevent Indonesia from "collapse, anarchy and disintegration."

"Can this (the legal, political and economic reforms) be carried out without national stability – the answer is No," he said.

The return of troops to Aceh, ordered by armed forces chief General Wiranto followed two days of mass rioting triggered by the withdrawal of a second batch of troops stationed there to fight Islamic separatists. Local leaders and human rights groups have accused soldiers, deployed in Aceh for 10 years, to quash a separatist uprising, of gross human rights violations, for which Wiranto has apologized.

Yudhoyono said that while the armed forces admitted to human rights abuses: "Not everything" ABRI did in the past was wrong. "We have to look at all things comprehensively. ABRI were given a task to maintain order (in Aceh, Irian Jaya and other troubled areas) ...one has to distinguish between counter-insurgent operations and human rights abuses," he said.

"We will not accept that everything done in the past by ABRI was illegal," he said answering charges that the armed forces were as much a part of the problem as the solution to the country's political crisis. "There is a balance in my opinion ...we have learned from the past that too much (security) is counterproductive," he said.

Yudhoyono was cheered when he said that "The biggest mistake ABRI made (under the Suharto regime) was thinking we were responsible for everything. We must realize (now) that we are (just) a part of the whole nation."

However he rejected a suggestion that one way the Indonesian armed forces could cope with regional emergencies was to form a US-style National Guard. "We have to improve the quality and the system, not change the structure," he said, adding that ABRI, whose strength is at around 470,000 men was relatively small for the population of more than 200 million.

Yudhoyono side-stepped the much-debated issue of whether the armed forces should totally get out of politics, and abandon its traditional socio-political role which under Suharto, himself a retired general, gave them enormous power. But he conceded that it would be "lessened" in the reform era, while its "security" role would not be abandonned.

Calls for a review of the army's non-defence role have been mounting, especially since Suharto resigned on May 21. Yudhoyono also warned foreign countries against "intervention" as Indonesia tries to resolve its economic, political and legal crises. "The Indonesian people will not be pleased if there is too much intervention ...we do not want too much interference," he said.