Jakarta – Former Republican Senate majority leader Bob Dole wants to help Indonesia in Washington but has not been hired as a lobbyist, the foreign ministry said Friday.

"It is not correct that Bob Dole has been appointed as an Indonesian lobbyist," spokesman Marty Natalegawa told a press conference. "There is no type of blanket contract."

The Far Eastern Economic Review magazine in its February 5 edition said the government has hired Dole as a lobbyist to represent its interests in Washington, the first time Jakarta has taken on a prominent US politician in such a role.

"In general there is an expression of readiness from the gentleman to help Indonesia on a case-by-case basis," Natalegawa said, without commenting on any financial arrangements. "The fact is this is not something out of the ordinary," he said.

For the moment there is nothing that immediately requires Dole's involvement but "later, suppose there are things that need the gentleman's help, certainly we will ask for assistance."

Congressmen recently voted against the restoration of a military training programme in the United States for Indonesian officers.

The US administration has been seeking closer defence ties with Indonesia as part of what it calls its global war on terror.

But it says it cannot resume most of the military links, which were suspended in 1999 over the bloodshed in East Timor, without a full accounting for military abuses and a proper inquiry into the killing of two Americans in Papua province in August 2002.

Dole, who is now special counsel to a major Washington law firm, ran unsuccessfully against Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election.