Reporter: Alexandra Kirk
Mark Colvin: There's been a mixed reaction to the Federal Government's decision to resume training with Indonesia's special forces.
Military cooperation was cut in 1999 when Kopassus trained militias which killed East Timorese people while Australia was leading a peacekeeping mission there.
The Defence Minister Robert Hill says if there's a terrorist incident, the safety of Australians in Indonesia could well rest on effective cooperation with Indonesia's military.
He says Indonesia knows Australia's views about human rights abuses and the military leadership will ensure that those sent here won't cause Australia any embarrassment.
From Canberra, Alexandra Kirk reports.
Alexandra Kirk: Australia cut ties with Indonesia's Kopassus unit after it was linked to human rights abuses in East Timor. Kopassus Unit 81 is the Indonesian Special Forces counter terrorism team. The Defence Minister Robert Hill says [it] has the most effective capability to respond to certain types of terrorist threats in Indonesia, the reason driving the resumption of joint military training.
Robert Hill: Australians have been targeted in Indonesia. There will be occasions when the best response available is through Kopassus and we would like to see Kopassus trained to be as capable as possible. So I'm talking about counter terrorism, counter hijack – those sort of capabilities.
Alexandra Kirk: Critics of Kopassus argue Indonesia's police force has been doing a good job with its special counter terrorist unit. But Senator Hill says the military may be required too.
Robert Hill: It could be in relation to an aviation incident, we don't generally like to speculate on the detail of these things, but you imagine the sort of circumstances where the SAS in Australia would be called in to assist.
Alexandra Kirk: As for continuing human rights concerns, while Senator Hill maintains there's been significant improvement which should be recognised and rewarded, Australia's taken some precautionary steps.
Robert Hill: The Indonesian military leadership will ensure that those who are sent to Australia they put on the list, will not cause us embarrassment.
Alexandra Kirk: Dr Alan Dupont, senior fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, thinks it's the right decision.
Alan Dupont: It's a qualified decision and part of the reason for that is because there are well founded concerns about Kopassus because of its human rights record, which has not been particularly good.
On the other hand, I think the Government's view is that that has to be balanced against the need to obtain military cooperation in the war against terror and since Kopassus, like our SAS in Australia, is an intrinsic part of their counter terrorist organisation, then they've got to be included in the calculation.
I think that's, at the end of the day, when you weigh all that up, some of the human rights concerns I think are overweighed by the calculations of realpolitik here. You've just got to have the military on board if you're going to be serious about conducting effective counter terrorist operations in Indonesia.
Alexandra Kirk: Dr Dupont believes Kopassus still has a human rights problem. He says many infringements have been carried out by individuals, small groups of renegade officers, not Kopassus as a whole.
Alan Dupont: You're either going to deal with the Indonesian military or you're not. You can't hive off parts and cherry pick and say we're only going to deal with parts of it.
Alexandra Kirk: But he doesn't think Australia should re-establish full defence engagement with Indonesia.
Alan Dupont: I think in the area of counter terrorism it's necessary to do that, but in other areas, I'd very cautious about going back to the sort of links that we had before. And I think the second point is that in cooperating with Kopassus we should be exposing them to the way in which we do things here and encourage them to make reforms of their own organisation.
Alexandra Kirk: Dr Damien Kingsbury has a different view. A specialist in Indonesian affairs at Deakin University, who's written extensively on Indonesia's armed forces, or TNI, he thinks Australia's acted too hastily. Firstly, he thinks Kopassus is now redundant as an anti-terrorist force.
Damien Kingsbury: If you look at the arrests over the past two or three years, it's been the police that have been active in this and they've been very successful. We've got good relations with the police and we should pursue that – not military links.
Senator Hill says the Kopassus members that will be trained probably don't have a record of human rights abuses in East Timor. What he's not saying of course is that they do probably have a record of human rights abuses in Aceh, in West Papua and possibly elsewhere, not to mention intelligence links into Islamist organisations that are conventionally regarded as terrorists.
Thirdly, we really effectively approving the Indonesian military for performance that it has not yet achieved, that we're giving it a pat on the back for reforms that have not yet been put in place.
Alexandra Kirk: Dr Kingsbury was also a political adviser to the Free Aceh Movement in this year's Helsinki peace talks. He's a long-standing critic of Kopassus.
Damien Kingsbury: Well, my well stated opposition to Kopassus stems from having seen it first hand perpetrate myriad abuses in a range of places, and I'm not against countries having a military as such – of course, everybody needs to defend themselves. But Kopassus really, it's culture is so deeply entrenched that really, even the former US Ambassador has said that it's impossible to reform it. It's an organisation that really needs to be thrown out and if you want that sort of special services unit, you have to start again.
Mark Colvin: Dr Damien Kingsbury from Deakin University, speaking to Alexandra Kirk.