Australia offers more military training

Australia offers more military training

CANBERRA (Reuter): Australia has offered Indonesia extra help in training its armed forces following a U.S. cutback on defense ties with the Indonesian government, Australian Defense Minister Robert Ray said on Tuesday.

"Indonesia is finding that its opportunities in the United States to train militarily are much more limited than they have been in the past... if not drying up," Ray told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio from Jakarta after meetings with Indonesia's military leadership.

"So Australia is willing to fill part of that void," he said.

The United States last year curtailed some U.S. military training for the Indonesian armed forces and tied a variety of arms sales to improvements in Indonesia's human rights record.

Ray said that cutbacks in its own defense force numbers had left Australia with plenty of spare defense training capacity.

"So it will be quite easy to accommodate those desires from Indonesia and I think it will be beneficial for the relationship," he said.

Ray said technical training was one area where Australia had excess capacity and Indonesia had some deficiencies.

On Monday, Ray said Indonesia and Australia were considering setting up a joint venture to produce weapons and other military equipment.

Australia already carries out joint naval and air force training exercises with Indonesia and senior army officers study at Australia's military college.

Indonesian anti-terrorist forces have also trained briefly with similar Australian forces.