Jakarta – The United States has denied that it issued a travel ban against Gen. (ret) Wiranto, as was reported in The Washington Post.

"We have no policy to ban anyone ... I don't know why the reports were exaggerated," US Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph L. Boyce said here on Wednesday during a discussion after US President George W. Bush's State of the Union address to Congress.

Boyce refused to comment further on the alleged ban or The Washington Post report which quoted unidentified sources as saying the US had a list of people, including Wiranto, who would not be permitted to enter the country because of their human rights records.

"I want to say, everyone can apply for a visa .... Banning people is not our policy," Boyce said. He also said that Wiranto himself had denied in the press that he had been banned by the US, "so there is no reason to dramatize the reports", he said as quoted by Antara.

The Washington Post recently reported that six current generals and a former Indonesian general had been banned by the US from entering the country because they were linked to human rights abuses in East Timor in 1999. The newspaper did not name the generals except for Wiranto.