The US lifted an arms embargo against Indonesia, ending a six-year ban on military contacts with the world's most populous Muslim nation because of human-rights concerns, the US State Department said.
The administration of US President George W. Bush has argued that isolating Indonesia, which has been hit by several bombings by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in recent years, was not in Washington's strategic interests.
The move, announced on Tuesday in Washington, drew immediate criticism from rights groups.
PHOTO: AP
"With the stroke of a pen, ... President Bush betrayed the untold tens of thousands of victims of the Indonesian military's brutality in Indonesia and East Timor,'' said John Miller, from the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network.
But Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yesterday hailed Washington's decision to resume some military aid as marking a new chapter in relations, but other officials and politicians were more cautious.
"This is a new page, a new chapter in the strategic relations between Indonesia and the United States which have since 1999 gone through substantial ups and downs in relation to its defense cooperation," Yudhoyono said.
"The essence is that the sanction, or embargo imposed by the United States, has been lifted," the president told ElShinta radio in New Delhi, where he is on an official visit.
Yudhoyono said the US International Military Education and Training (IMET), Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programs were now "back to normal."
US Congress cut ties with Indonesia's military in 1999 after it was accused of taking part in violence in East Timor during that territory's break from Jakarta rule in a UN-sponsored referendum.
Limited ties had been restored under the Bush administration -- chiefly a small officer-training program -- but Indonesia has been lobbying Washington to remove all restrictions.
The State Department used a national security waiver to drop the embargo, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
He said that the administration planned to help modernize the Indonesian military and support US and Indonesian security objectives, including counterterrorism, but that Washington "remained committed to pressing for accountability for past human rights abuses."
Moves to restore ties received a boost after the tsunami last year, which killed 130,000 people on Indonesia's Sumatra Island. The US and Indonesian militaries worked together to deliver aid to victims.
Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a US-educated general elected a year ago in the country's first ever direct elections for head of state, is popular in Washington because of his moves to crack down on Islamic militants.
The Bush administration has argued that the ban on contacts should be lifted to help build Indonesia into a bulwark against al-Qaeda infiltration in Southeast Asia, where the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group has launched several terror attacks in the region.
Miller said that the Indonesian police -- not the military -- should be responsible for fighting terror, and that by removing the embargo Washington had lost its leverage with Indonesia.
"It gives the military the seal of approval," he said. "The military is not an institution promoting stability in Indonesia and the region. The way to encourage democracy [in Indonesia] is not to give it more guns."
The underfunded military has long been accused of human-rights violations in the course of putting down separatist insurgencies in far-flung regions of the sprawling and at times mostly inaccessible archipelago.
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