Jakarta – Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid on Wednesday said blame for past and present human rights abuses by the country's police and military should be attributed to rogue elements, and not to the institutions.

In an address to participants of an international human rights workshop here, Wahid admitted that the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and national police (Polri) had carried out massive human rights abuse in the past.

"Indeed there were a lot of [cases] of human rights abuse carried out by officers in the past, maybe they still exist until now. But basically, these institutions were used by rogue elements to carry out [human rights] abuse ... and yet, the institutions themselves are not guilty," said Wahid, who has since his election in 1999 tried to tame the once all-powerful armed forces.

But despite their track-record of rights abuse, Wahid said Indonesians both needed and should strengthen the police and the military. "We also need to strengthen the TNI for national defense and Polri for security protection," he said.

Since the fall of former president Suharto, himself a retired army general, foreign and local human rights activists have been vocal in their condemnation of "arbitrary killings and torture" carried out for decades by the police and armed forces, especially in the troubled regions of Aceh, Maluku and Irian Jaya.

The military and police have also been blamed by rights groups and foreign governments for the orgy of violence in East Timor by the military-trained pro-Jakarta militias after the former Indonesian territory voted for independence on August 30, 1999. The East Timor violence led to US military-equipment purchase sanctions on Indonesia that remain in effect.

On May 30, Amnesty International said in its annual report that the human rights situation deteriorated in Indonesia last year, with killings and torture by the security forces undermining efforts to investigate past abuses.

"Positive initiatives, such as efforts to investigate some past violations of human rights, were outweighed by a marked deterioration in the human rights situation in areas such as [the provinces of] Aceh and Papua [Irian Jaya]," the London-based watchdog said.

"Human rights violations by the security forces also took place in other contexts, including land and labour disputes, political demonstrations and in the areas of religious or ethnic conflict ..." it said.