Jakarta – The military takeover in Pakistan because of the failure in democracy there should be a warning to Indonesia, an Indonesian general involved in the reform of the armed forces has said.

"We are reminded by various cases of democratization failure, the most recent one in Pakistan," Lieutenant General Agus Widjojo told a regional seminar on democracy here on Sunday, the text of which was obtained here Tuesday.

"It is to be hoped that the fate of civilian rule in Pakistan will serve as a warning to the new democracies in Indonesia," said the general, a US-educated staff expert on politics and security to the country's armed forces commander.

Widjojo said that in Pakistan "most civilians seem to have welcomed the military ... that relieved them of a corrupt and inefficient regime."

"There is no reason to say that what happened in Pakistan serves as an opening to possibilities of [the Indonesian] military's return to politics, but it is better to learn from the mistakes of others than to suffer from the same mistakes oneself."

The only military speaker at the seminar, Widjojo is credited as one of the authors of the reforms undertaken by the Indonesian military since the fall of former president Suharto two years ago after 32 years in power.

The general said the Indonesian military had now positioned itself as a part of the national decision to enter the democratization process and "intends to see that the process takes the nation to arrive at a more democratic Indonesia."

But he rejected outright the Indonesian student battle cry of "Back to the barracks" as describing the military's adjustment from being unchallenged number one in all walks of life including parliament, the provinces and business, to a tool of a democratic state.

Calling the reform process "repositioning," he insisted it must be carried out gradually, and involve the independence of the police from the military and a gradual change of the army's territorial role – which under Suharto had the army paralleling the civilian administration at all levels of society.

Now, with the Indonesian press hammering the military for its past human rights abuses, the armed forces was "feeling a climate of ambivilance."

"There are those that would like [us] to be out of the social and political role totally and all at one," he said. "And on the other hand when something happens in the provinces, people say where are the military. What are we supposed to do?"

The general said one of the banes of the Indonesian military throughout its history and especially under Suharto's rule had been the centralization of authority in Indonesia without adequate checks and balances.

Describing the military as one of Suharto's "victims," along with political parties, he said Suharto turned the military's "right to assume a non-military role" from a choice to an obligation to support his grip on power.

One of the worries of the military now was that its withdrawal from politics and its territorial role should lead to "the filling of the empty spaces by civilian militiamen." The military was also determined to prevent the Balkanization of the archipelago.

Australian National University Indonesia expert Harold Crouch, speaking to the same seminar, said he hoped "the fate of civilian rule in Pakistan will serve as a warning to the new government of Indonesia."

Crouch said he saw no danger now of an attempt by the Indonesian military to make a comeback, as "they are not stupid" and knew they would be faced with massive public opposition.

But he said: "In the longer run – perhaps in two or three years – the real test will come if the civilian government has failed to establish its authority."