Jakarta – Indonesian military observers have warned the country's newly-empowered MPs pose a serious threat to the armed forces' attempts to extricate itself from politics.

"The primary threat actually to military democratisation ... is basically because of the divided and competing civilian elite," Rizal Sukma of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told AFP.

"Because of this rivalry they are tempted to intervene and to politicise the military in order to strengthen their own position."

Sukma was speaking on the sidelines of a seminar here to discuss draft amendments to the defence laws, which participants said were flawed because they could leave the once all-powerful military again open to manipulation by leaders – as they were for decades under former dictator Suharto.

The proposed amendments were submitted to the lower house of parliament (DPR) last week, and a special legislative commission has been set up to debate the proposals and pass them into law by mid-year.

Two of the academics who advised the defence ministry on the amendments said many MPs were actually trying to keep the military in politics to serve their own ends.

Sukma pointed to the MPR's decision last August to extend the military's seats in the legislature until 2009, four years after they leave the lower house of parliament (DPR).

"The civilian MPs needed to woo the military faction in the MPR so it seems they try to provide some kind of concession by giving the military the right to stay in the MPR until 2009."

Cornelius Lay of Yogyakarta's Gadja Mada University, said that more dangerous than political opportunism was the MPs scant knowledge of defence. "There is an ignorance among them about defence problems in Indonesia," Lay told AFP.

"Even up till now only a very few members of parliament have paid any attention to defence law or affairs. About two months ago we invited them to discuss the military problems in Indonesia and they said: 'It is not on our priorities.'"

Lay and Sukma raised two other worries about the draft legislation, which they said were probably due to a Suharto-era mind-set.

"The first problem is the title: 'state defence act.' Every other country calls it their national defence act," Lay said.

"A 'state' in Indonesia has been used to refer to a political regime, and the danger is the military forces could be used by a political regime for its own purpose," he told AFP.

"That's what happened in the past. By that definition Suharto systematically used the military for his purposes and interests, and we don't want that again."

Under the 32-year regime of Suharto, himself a former army general, the military was widely seen as keeping the strongman in power, and held key positions in government, the legislature, business and provincial administrations.

A key demand of reformists who forced Suharto from power in 1998 was the total removal of the military from politics, and a return to civilian rule. Sukma said the term "state defence act" reflected "a way of thinking."

The current draft, which has been revised four times, also fails to make the armed forces' chief answerable to the defence minister – a change Sukma and Lay maintain is essential if the military is to accede to civilian rule.

"If we talk about democratic civilian-military relations, there is no other choice but to put the commander-in-chief under the civilian minister of defence," Lay said.