Officials from Indonesia and the United States today began a two-day meeting which Jakarta hopes will signal the start of a resumption of full military ties with Washington.
US deputy assistant defense secretary for the Asia-Pacific, Mr Peter Brookes, is heading the 10-member delegation from Washington, with the Indonesian side led by the Defence Ministry's Director General of Strategy, Major General Sudrajat.
Major General Sudrajat said the issue of military relations between the US and Indonesia, which were suspended after the 1999 East Timor violence, would be raised in the talks. Reform in the Indonesian military and sea piracy were also on the agenda, he said.
The US Congress suspended military aid and training for Indonesia in September 1999 to pressure Jakarta over its military's role in atrocities in East Timor after the territory voted for independence.
"It will be part of the discussion. We don't have any benchmark for the target but we are looking for any possibilities to create a better military relationship in the future," Major General Sudrajat said.
But senior US officials said a normalisation of ties is still a long way off, and insist the topic is not on the agenda of this weeks’ talks.
"The two sides are exchanging views rather than focussing on remaining issues that separate us from having a full-scale military to military relationship," said one top official on condition of anonymity.
Conditions in the Indonesian military still "fall well short of a full-scale normalisation of relations," he said.
The official cited accountability for human rights violations by Indonesian soldiers as the key stumbling block.
AFP