Indonesia optimistic on Singapore defence pact

Singapore, June 3: Indonesia's defence minister said today he expects all outstanding issues holding up a defence treaty with Singapore to be resolved by the end of next week, paving the way for ratification of the deal.

Juwono Sudarsono said the defence agreement, which was signed in April and will allow Singapore's air force and navy to train in Indonesia, was delayed because the two countries could not agree on issues including how often Singapore's forces would hold firing exercises in Indonesia and their environmental impact.

''We hope to get some kind of temporary agreement by the end of next week,'' Sudarsono told Reuters on the sidelines of an Asian security conference attended by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other senior security officials.

Indonesia and Singapore signed the treaty together with an extradition pact Jakarta had sought from Singapore for several years. Both need to be ratified by the countries' parliaments.

Indonesia wants to use the extradition deal to track down fugitive business executives it says owe money to the authorities and who may be living in Singapore.

Singapore said last month the extradition treaty would only come into effect once problems over the defence pact were resolved.

Sudarsono said Jakarta wants to spell out how often Singapore's armed forces conduct firing exercises in Indonesia, but the city-state feels such an arrangement would be inflexible and would make ''substantive changes'' to the agreement.

''Those are reasonable aspects. Singapore should not feel that they limit the flexibility and the manoeuverability of the exercises,'' he said.

Sudarsono said he is also worried frequent firing exercises in Indonesia by Singapore forces may damage the environment.

''If there is a lot of live firing, missile firing at a target, say an old ship, it would damage the environment,'' Sudarsono said. ''We want to strictly limit the environmental damage. That is reasonable I think.'' Singapore's Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean told Reuters today that Jakarta had asked for some changes to the defence pact, and that Singapore has conveyed its view on those, but declined to be more specific.

A large number of wealthy Indonesians live in neigbouring Singapore and are key clients for luxury property developers and private banks.

One third of Singapore's high net worth individuals - those with more than 1 million dollar in wealth - are of Indonesian origin, Merrill Lynch and Capgemini said in a report last year. These 18,000 Indonesians have total assets worth 87 billion dollar.

Reuters>