Jakarta – The Indonesian armed forces have sought to dampen fears of a military coup but are considering a controversial plan to train civilian militia to help supervise elections next year, reports said Friday.

The no-coup reasurance was delivered by the governor of the National Resilience Institute, Lieutenant General Agum Gumelar, in a paper read for him at a seminar in the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta Thursday, the Jakarta Post said.

Gumelar said the armed forces, with its "unchangeable tradition of loyalty to the state" would never consider a coup. "This loyalty is ensured through our commitment to our responsibility to safeguard and participate in the drive for democracy," he said. The paper, read by Brigadier General Sofyan Yacob, was delivered as student protest demonstrations against the government intensified in Jakarta.

Armed Forces chief Wiranto and Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Feisal Tanjung meanwhile sought separately to justify a plan to raise an armed civilian militia to help supervise the first post-Suharto elections scheduled for June 7 of next year.

"It would be no problem if they were armed." Tanjung was quoted as saying during a military retirement ceremony in the Javanese city of Magelang, adding that recruitment would be carried out by the ministry of defence and the national police. "The technical matters will be handled by the police. They will train these civilians," the Post quoted him as saying.

Justifying the move, Faisal said the ratio of security forces to the population in Indonesia was currenty one to 1,200, too few to handle elections in this country of 202 million people.

The army came under strong criticism from human rights groups here and abroad last month when it used 125,000 civilians, many of them from groups with reputations for violence and thuggery, to help secure an assembly session in Jakarta last month. Many of the volunteers cruised the city in convoys of buses threatening civilians with sharpened bamboo stakes and knives.

In central Java, village vigilantes set up with the approval of local security authorities to counteract a wave of mysterious killings this year, have lynched, burned and beheaded strangers from other towns or people who did not respond to their questions.

Earlier this week, in a meeting between the armed forces chief and leading Moslem moderate Abdurrachman "Gus Dur" Wahid, Gus Dur urged Wiranto not to recruit extremists if he insisted on going through with the militia plan.

The meeting Wednesday between Wiranto and Gus Dur, who heads the moderate 30-million-strong Moslem Nadhlatul Ulama organization, came after Gus Dur issued a plea for a national dialogue.

The dialogue, between informal and formal leaders, was needed to prevent the situation in the country deteriorating into what he called "a revolution" where people lost all respect for authority, Gus Dur has said.

Suharto's successor, President B.J. Habibie rejected the plan as further complicating the situation and instead formed a Council for Enforcement of Security and Law. The Council's day to day operations are headed by Wiranto.