DISARMAMENT: Indonesia Says it Never Really Wanted U.S. Fighter Planes

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 1996 (IPS) - Indonesia is distancing itself from a multi-million-dollar arms deal under which the United States is trying to unburden 28 F-16s on the South-East Asian nation.

The problem is, the U.S. Congress has held up the sale.

The Bill Clinton Administration has been forced to put the arms deal on hold because of Congressional concerns over human rights in Indonesia. Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord says the proposal will be resubmitted to a new Congress in January.

Clearly peeved, Indonesia now says it had not been that keen on the planes in the first place.

“Let me make it very clear. We never asked for the fighter planes and we don’t need them,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas said here Tuesday. “Okay, If you don’t want to sell them to us, fine. No problem. We never asked for them.”

Alatas said that when Indonesian President Suharto was in Washington last October, he was told during the course of discussions: “By the way, we have some F-16 fighter planes. We will give you a good deal. Would you like to buy them?.”

“I was there when the offer was made,” said Alatas, “and President Suharto, in effect, said: ‘Thank you very much, but it is not one of our development priorities. We already have a squadron of F-16 fighters.”‘

But Alatas says Washington convinced the Indonesians in follow- up talks that it was too good a deal to pass up.

He attributed the delay to “highly exaggerated accounts of what is happening inside Indonesia.”

But asked if Indonesia would buy the planes if they were offered again next year, he said: “Yes. If the original offer still stands, we will buy them. In any case, we can find other places to buy fighter planes, if we really need them.”

The F-16s were originally destined for Pakistan which purchased them in 1990. But Congress has blocked delivery of the planes to that country.

The Pressler amendment — legislation sponsored by Republican Senator Larry Pressler — has made delivery of the planes contingent on certification by the U.S. president that Pakistan is not developing nuclear weapons. Since the Clinton administration does not have that assurance, the fighter planes are being offered to Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines. Only Indonesia has shown an interest thus far.

Pakistan hopes to get back the money it paid for the planes if Washington succeeds in selling them elsewhere.

“Pakistani officials maintain that the cost differential between what they paid for each aircraft in 1990 and the cost to Indonesia should be made up by the Pentagon,” the Washington- based Defense News reported recently.

Indonesia has agreed to pay only about eight to nine million dollars each for the ageing aircraft currently stored in warehouses in the U.S. state of Arizona. Pakistan had paid about 23 million dollars for each of the 28 planes.

Meanwhile, human rights organisations here object to the sale of U.S. arms and the provision of grants to Indonesia for military training.

“We have not taken a position on the F-16s per se, but we have taken the position that the U.S. should not be providing any arms or training to Indonesia,” Mike Jendrzejczyk of Human Rights Watch/Asia said.

The New York-based East Timor Action Network, which protests the use of U.S. arms against East Timorese, says that Indonesia is trying to get low-interest loans and concessions to facilitate the purchase of the fighter planes.

Under one proposal, Indonesia wants the United States to offset the F-16 purchase by spending about 30 percent of its earnings on Indonesian-made aircraft parts and military spares.

Since 1989, Indonesia has manufactured F-16 components, including aircraft access doors, weapon pylons, fuel pylons, and landing gear doors. The contract was part of an offset agreement totaling 35 percent of the cost of 12 F-16 fighters Indonesia purchased in August 1986.

Over the objections of human rights groups, the Clinton Administration resumed military training that had been suspended in 1992. Arguing that the human rights situation had improved, Washington decided in 1995 to restore grants under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme.

The United States provided 600,000 dollars for 1996 and about 800,000 dollars for 1997 under the IMET programme. The Clinton Administration also proposed 26.2 million dollars in arms sales to Indonesia in 1996, up from about 4.6 million dollars in 1995.