By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated
Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress is
moving toward sending money to Indonesia to help train its police
but has yet to warm up to the White House's call for increased
relations with the country's military forces.
The House on Friday agreed to provide
$8 million to help train Indonesia's police forces in
anti-terrorism as part of the $29 billion anti-terrorism bill.
The Senate Appropriations Committee
earlier had agreed to send money to Indonesia's police, saying the
United States "recognizes that Indonesia is a potential
terrorist haven."
The Senate earmarked $4 million for
general law enforcement training and $12 million "to train
and equip an Indonesia police unit to prevent or respond to
international terrorism."
The Senate money does come with
strings attached. Assistance is prohibited to mobile brigade
units, which the report accompanying the bill says "have a
long history of human rights abuses."
The House and the Senate committee
also specifically refused to provide any money that would have
gone to the country's military forces.
The State Department had asked for
$8 million to train and equip a military force to control problems
within Indonesia that police are unable to control.
But the Indonesian military has
been accused of corruption and human rights abuses, especially for
its role in trying to suppress the independence drive in East
Timor (news
- web
sites) in 1999.
The United States cut ties with the
Indonesian military following the East Timor violence and has said
that reforms — including accounting for the violence — are
necessary to resume normal relations.
However, the Bush administration
— spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a
former ambassador to Jakarta — has been pushing to re-establish
relations with the Indonesian military to fight terrorism.
The administration has been
"interested in finding ways to work with the Congress to
re-establish the kind of military-to-military relations which we
believe are appropriate," Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld said May 14. He did not elaborate on what those might be.
"We are of the view that it's
time for them to be adjusted substantially," he said.
The law halting aid — called the
Leahy Amendment for Sen. Patrick Leahy (news,
bio,
voting
record), the Vermont Democrat who sponsored it — requires
that Indonesia cooperate with investigations and prosecutions of
members of the armed forces responsible for human rights abuses.
"If we provide this aid it
should be narrowly focused and closely monitored, and it should
reinforce our other foreign policy goals, including respect for
human rights," said Leahy, who chairs the Senate
Appropriations Committee's foreign operations subcommittee.
Human rights groups say the
conditions have not been met.
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