RI, U.S. armies hold joint exercise

JAKARTA: Fifty Indonesian Army engineers have been involved in a month-long joint exercise with nine special U.S. army personnel in Bogor, West Java, Antara reported yesterday.

The exercise, which began on Feb. 9 and is scheduled to end tomorrow, has been testing demolition capabilities including the destruction of tanks/armored personnel carriers, plantations, buildings and obstacles, the news agency quoted a statement from the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI) information center as saying.

The exercise also covered defensive acts such as creating tank obstacles with explosives, destroying bridges and halting convoy and troop movements, it said.

Maj. Gen. Suadi Marasabessi, the Army chief of staff's assistant for operations, and Brig. Gen. Koenwirhadi, director of the Indonesian Army's engineers division, inspected the personnel and equipment involved in the exercise yesterday.

The exercise, code-named Balance Iron 98-7, involved personnel from the engineers division and the Army Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad), the Presidential Security Guard, Jakarta Military Command's engineers division, the Army's Combat Exercise Center (Puslatpur), seven men from the U.S. Army Special Forces and two others from the U.S. Marine Corps.