America regrets Indonesia's decision on F-16s

America regrets Indonesia's decision on F-16s

WASHINGTON (Agencies): The United States expressed regret Friday over Indonesia's decision to drop its plan to purchase nine F-16 fighter planes, but agreed that bilateral cooperation on other issues should continue.

"It is, of course, a decision that Indonesia had to make on its own," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

The decision will not prevent continued future cooperation with Indonesia on regional issues, Burns said "We intend to continue working with Indonesia and we'll just have to move on."

White House chief spokesman Mike McCurry also regretted the Indonesian move. "We have a bilateral relationship in which we cooperate in a number of areas, but we do have some disagreements with respect to human rights issues and we stick by our concerns," McCurry said.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas said in Jakarta Friday that the F-16 deal was called off because "wholly unjustified criticisms" by U.S. lawmakers about Indonesia.

Alatas also said Indonesia was withdrawing from the U.S.'s expanded International Military Training Program (IMET) for senior Indonesian military officers, a program that is worth $600,000 a year.

The decision was made public on Friday although President Soeharto's letter to President Bill Clinton was dated May 26.

Soeharto in the letter objected Congress's attempt to link its criticisms to the plane sell and the IMET program.

U.S. officials wanted to sell the nine F-16s to Indonesia and pass on the proceeds to Pakistan, which paid $650 million for 28 of the jets in 1989 but could not take delivery because of U.S. fears it was developing nuclear weapons.

Indonesia had agreed to the U.S. offer but the deal was blocked by Congress last year because of its concerns at what it saw as human rights violations by Indonesia.

Congress put a stop to IMET in 1992 in protest at an incident in Dili, East Timor, but the program was resumed in 1996. Now, Representative Patrick Kennedy, a second-term Democrat from the strongly Portuguese-American state of Rhode Island, has initiated a bill in House seeking to terminate the program once more along with other military aid programs for Indonesia worth $26 million a year.

Kennedy in a statement welcomed the Indonesian move and vowed to continue pressing Jakarta on human rights and East Timor issues.

State legislators in Massachusetts, which has a large Portuguese-American population, are considering a bill that would bar state contracts with firms that do business with Indonesia.

Pakistan is considering filing a civil lawsuit to recover its money before February 1999, when 10 years will have passed since the deal was agreed and federal law will bar such efforts.

A lawsuit in U.S. District Court here "is one of several options," a Pakistani official here said Friday. "The Pakistani cabinet will decide in the next three to four months."

Burns said Washington has already approached a number of other countries with the plane, although he declined to name them.

"We had started to talk to other countries, actually, before this formal announcement was made anticipating that the government of Indonesia might get cold feet," he said.

"This is an excellent aircraft ... American aircraft are the best in the world ... And we think there will be no shortage of potential buyers. We are talking to some countries, but I can't talk about those negotiations until they move further along."

Chile is among the countries in the world known to be actively interested in buying advanced aircraft.

The United States currently has a policy of restraint in selling advanced systems to Latin America but that has been under review for the past 12 months.