JAKARTA: A legislative team assigned to examine the flow of
JAKARTA: A legislative team assigned to examine the flow of Presidential Aid (Banpres) funds will soon convene to make final recommendations to the House of Representatives.
Team leader R.K. Sembiring Meliala confirmed on Wednesday the team had concluded that State Secretary Bambang Kesowo had not committed any violations in dispensing the aid.
"The fund is now under the responsibility of the Ministry of Finance," Sembiring of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) faction added.
The team held a series of meetings and questioned several former state secretaries, including Muladi, Ali Rachman and Bambang Kesowo, in its investigation.
The team was set up after President Megawati Soekarnoputri donated Rp 30 billion for the renovation of military and police barracks. The money came from the Banpres.
Legislators had accused the President of misusing the Banpres, but withdrew their allegations after hearing from the state secretaries. -- JP
N. Korea's Kim Yong Nam to visit RI
JAKARTA: North Korea's ceremonial head of state will visit Indonesia next week for talks with President Megawati Soekarnoputri, a palace official said on Wednesday.
Kim Yong Nam, speaker of the North Korean Supreme People's Assembly, will arrive in Jakarta on July 10 for a three-day visit, said presidential staffer Garibaldi Sudjatmiko.
Kim Yong Nam will be the communist state's highest-ranking leader to visit Indonesia since the early 1960s.
In March, Megawati met North Korean President Kim Jong Ill in Pyongyang. She brought the North Korean leader a message from South Korean President Kim Dae Jung urging the communist North to revive dialog with Seoul.
Inter-Korean relations, which had improved in 2000, were hurt by tension between the United States and North Korea that arose after U.S. President George W. Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil". -- AP
Rights trial defendant withdraws testimony
JAKARTA: A senior Indonesian policeman accused of human rights violations in East Timor on Wednesday told a human rights trial that previous statements he had made to investigators were false.
Former Suai Police precinct chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Gatot Subiaktoro, one of a number of military or police officers facing charges, withdrew statements linking the Suai Military District Command to marauding pro-Jakarta militia.
"I could not think (straight at the time of making the statement) ... I was in shock for being named a suspect for crimes against humanity," he told the Central Jakarta human rights ad hoc court investigating the 1999 East Timor violence.
"The statement in the dossiers was not true, your honor," he told the hearing presided over by Judge Cicut Sutiarso.
The dossiers quote him as saying that the police could not probe the attack by the pro-Jakarta Laksaur militia on proindependence supporters taking refuge in the St. Ave Maria Church in Suai town on Sept. 6, 1999, because of an emotional relationship between Laksaur and the military command.
Twenty-seven civilians, including three Catholic priests, were killed in the attack.
The dossiers also recorded his conversation with the late Olivio Moruk, the Laksaur leader, which justified the existence of the armed militia.
Gatot, who testified that he did not have enough power to prevent the attack, claimed that he had never said that he endorsed the presence of the armed group. --JP