James Politi, Washington – The US on Friday raised the political pressure on Indonesia, urging the Pacific nation to allow independent monitors into Aceh, the restive island province where Jakarta recently launched a massive military crackdown on separatists.

Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary and US ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan administration, said it would be "very helpful" if Jakarta allowed independent observers into Aceh. "I think it can help encourage the world that Indonesia is behaving, its troops are behaving professionally and carefully," said Mr Wolfowitz, speaking in Singapore after meeting Indonesia's defence minister, Matori Abdul Djalil.

This week Jakarta said it wanted all foreign aid workers to leave Aceh and all future aid to be distributed through government agencies, raising fears that the government hopes to limit international scrutiny of its campaign.

Earlier this month Indonesia abandoned last-ditch talks in Tokyo aimed at preserving a five-month ceasefire with separatists fighting under the banner of the Free Aceh Movement (Gam).

The collapse of the talks led Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia's president, to declare martial law in Aceh and to instruct about 40,000 troops and police to crack down on Gam in the nation's largest military deployment since the 1975 invasion of East Timor.

"This is not the way we were hoping things would turn out," said one US State Department official, who added that the US was watching the situation "carefully".

Mr Djalil said the Aceh operation was both military and humanitarian, and that he was hopeful of Indonesia's success within six months. "And maybe it will finish in just two or three months because we understand, and we are aware, that too long [a period of] martial law, I think, is not good for our government," he said.

One way the US could reprimand the Indonesian military for bad behaviour would be to withhold funding for military training under the Indonesian portion of the international military education and training (IMET) programme, worth $400,000.

Last week the US Senate's foreign relations committee passed an amendment linking IMET funding to co-operation with the US government, but Mr Wolfowitz was sceptical.

Separately, the deputy defence secretary denied a report in the Los Angeles Times that suggested the US was planning to redeploy marines stationed in Okinawa, Japan, to other countries on the Pacific rim.

"That's simply not right," Mr Wolfowitz said, while acknowledging that the US was "taking a fundamental look" at its defence posture worldwide, including Asia. "But no decisions have been made about any of those changes yet."