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Indonesian military says loyal to govt

JAKARTA: The head of Indonesia's armed forces pledged on Thursday that the military would never stage a coup against the civilian government.

Admiral Widodo told a parliamentary committee President Abdurrahman Wahid's recent warning 10 percent of the military (TNI) was not loyal to the president could not be ignored.

"We see that as a warning which deserves attention... and there needs to be solidarity among the TNI," he said after being summoned by the committee amid fears of a coup over tensions between Wahid and former military chief General Wiranto.

"The TNI would never have any intention of staging a coup," Widodo said. "The TNI will always support the current government, because it is a legal government set up democratically."

Before leaving on an overseas visit two weeks ago, Wahid said 10 percent of the armed forces were not loyal to him, but added that he was confident he could swing them behind him.

Wiranto has defied Wahid's order to quit as coordinating minister for politics and security affairs after separate Indonesian and U.N. inquiries implicated him in the violence surrounding East Timor's U.N.-run vote last year to end Indonesian rule.

The stand-off has fuelled fears the military would oust Indonesia's first democratically elected president while he is out of the country on an official visit to Europe and Asia.

But many analysts say it has more to do with the general trying to save his own skin and win immunity from prosecution.

The attorney-general's office is expected to take at least three months to decide whether to act on the Indonesian inquiry, which named Wiranto and five other generals as partly responsible for the East Timor bloodshed.

Wiranto was Indonesia's armed forces commander last year when military-backed militias launched a wave of terror in East Timor after most of the population voted for independence.

Wahid, who returns home on Sunday, has offered to pardon Wiranto if he is convicted, but not any of the other officers.

Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 with the backing of the West, fearful it would become another communist outpost in Asia.

But its brutal rule there, never internationally recognised, soon soured relations with much of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese are thought to have been killed or died of starvation and disease under Jakarta's rule.-Reuters