U.S. ends ban on ties with Indonesian special forces

Reuters, JAKARTA, By Phil Stewart, Thu Jul 22, 2010 3:26am EDT

(Reuters) - The United States announced on Thursday it was dropping a more than decade-old ban on ties with Indonesia's special forces, imposed over human rights abuses in the 1990s.

The decision, made public by U.S. officials during a visit by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Jakarta, was taken after Indonesia took steps requested by Washington including removal of convicted human rights violators from the organization's ranks.

Human rights groups have voiced concern, however, that the roughly 5,000-strong special forces unit, known as Kopassus, still harbors rights offenders who were suspected of abuses but never convicted.

"There has been a dramatic change in that unit over the last decade - the percentage of suspicious bad actors in the unit is tiny," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

"We are talking about probably a dozen, or a couple dozen people, that some regard as suspicious still in the unit. Obviously we are working to reduce that number to zero."

For the moment, the decision only re-establishes contacts between the U.S. military and Kopassus, which were cut off entirely in 1999. Actual combat training of Indonesia's special forces, suspended since 1998, would come much later and only after vetting of individuals who would receive U.S. assistance.

"These are two organizations, the U.S. military and Kopassus, that haven't dealt with each other for a long time," a senior U.S. defense official said, calling the re-engagement with Kopassus a "gradual, measured" process.

The decision is meant to bolster the U.S. effort to build military ties with the world's most populous Muslim nation, seen in Washington as an ally in the battle against Islamic extremism.

Indonesia was hit by deadly bomb attacks on hotels in the capital Jakarta last year, blamed on a splinter group that had split from the Jemaah Islamiah militant group. Jemaah Islamiah was blamed for the 2002 bombings of the Indonesian resort island of Bali that killed 202 people. Police have the lead role in combating terror threats in Indonesia.

Human rights groups and some members of Congress have strongly resisted calls to restore funding to Kopassus without concrete steps taken to ensure that members suspected of committing abuses would not benefit from U.S. assistance.

"We have received assurances and commitments that anybody in the future who is suspected of a human rights violation will be suspended. Then, if the investigation proves that they were responsible and they were convicted, they will be removed," the official said.

But those assurances did not apply to suspects of past abuses who were not convicted in Indonesia, the official said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, in a letter to Gates and to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this year, singled out its concerns about the Kopassus counter-terror component known as Unit 81, "the entity whose members the Department of Defense presumably seeks to train."

"Members of what is now called Unit 81 have been credibly accused of serious human rights abuses or other improper conduct," it wrote.

It cited its suspected role controlling abusive pro-Indonesia militias in East Timor between 1986 and 1999 and the disappearance of student activists in 1997-1998 in Jakarta.

Kopassus has also been accused of rights abuses in secessionist hot spots such as resource-rich Papua, located on the western half of New Guinea island, which is one of Indonesia's most politically sensitive regions.

Indonesian police have said militants may be switching tactics and instead of targeting Westerners, focusing future armed attacks on state targets such as the president and police.

(Editing by Sara Webb)

In this Dec. 19, 2008 file photo, Indonesian elite soldiers of Special Forces Commandos, or Kopassus, wearing the unit's signature red beret, stand in formation in a show of force ahead of a major anti-terror drill. The United States announced on Thursday it will resume cooperation with Indonesia's special forces after ties were severed more than a decade ago over human rights abuses allegedly committed by the commando unit. (AP Photo/Irwin Fedriansyah)

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