Edi denies rifle deal with Australia
Edi denies rifle deal with Australia
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Security and Defense Gen. (ret.) Edi Sudradjat dismissed as untrue an Australian press report yesterday suggesting that Indonesia was considering the purchase of Australian-made Steyr assault rifles.
"We've never had any plan to buy assault rifles from Australia, neither in large nor small volume because we are already producing our own rifles," Edi was quoted by the Antara news agency as telling reporters.
"What deal? We haven't even thought about buying," Edi said in the first official comment from Jakarta to the report published earlier by The Australian.
He added that Indonesia might want one or two Steyr rifles, "for our collection.. We need to study about rifles, but we won't arm our soldiers with them."
Edi, the former Armed Forces (ABRI) chief and former Army Chief of Staff, said the current SS1 rifle, produced by the state-owned arms manufacturer Pindad, remains the main weapon of the Armed Forces. "There hasn't been any complaint, so there is no plan to replace it."
"The rifle that we're producing is excellent and is produced to fit the physique of ABRI soldiers and is thus short and light," he said of the SS1, which is produced by Pindad under license from FNC, the Belgian arms manufacturer.
The Australian newspaper reported on Tuesday that Canberra has approved, in principle, a bid by the government-owned Australian Defense Industries (ADI) to sell Steyr assault rifles to the Indonesian military. The deal is worth A$100 million (US$76 million), according to the report.
ADI manufactures the 5.56 mm Steyr rifle for the Australian and New Zealand armies under license from Steyr-Daimler-Puch.
Edi yesterday did not rule out the possibility of buying the kind of arms that Indonesia still cannot produce itself from Australia. But he declined to elaborate if any such plans were in the pipeline.
Indonesia has been looking to diversify its arms suppliers away from the United States ever since 1993, when Washington blocked its planned purchase of U.S.-built F-5 fighters from Jordan on the grounds of a poor human rights record in Indonesia. (emb)