U.S. Condemns Indonesia’s Handling of Protests--but Offers No Sanctions

The Clinton administration, battered and embarrassed by bloody repression in Indonesia, has begun increasing the pressure on President Suharto’s regime, but it is not going so far as to threaten to withhold economic aid.

The killings of six student demonstrators Tuesday provoked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to issue the strongest official U.S. condemnation of the repression and to call for meaningful political reform.

Her strict words, however, were not accompanied by any economic threat. To the dismay of human rights advocates and critics in Congress, President Clinton and his advisors still believe, an administration spokesman said, that their first priority is to bolster Indonesia’s economy.

In her statement, Albright said Indonesia “needs to break the cycle of violence which appears to be emerging. All parties in Indonesia recognize the need for political reform. Such political reform can only be achieved through dialogue between the Indonesian government and its citizens.”

Albright went on to say the U.S. “deplores the killings” of demonstrators by Indonesian security forces and called on all sides to show restraint.

The decision to put economic concerns ahead of political ones, although widely considered realistic, troubles some members of Congress and specialists on Asian affairs.

“How can the United States justify bailing out a regime which grows more repressive by the day?” asked Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) in a letter to Clinton this week. “If we are truly concerned about the welfare of the Indonesian people, our continued funding should be contingent upon greater political openness and improvements in Indonesia’s human rights record.”

But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry has said the administration believes that preventing the collapse of the Indonesian economy must come first. He told The Times’ Washington Bureau this week that “the collapse . . . would be a sign of lack of success of the efforts that we’ve developed within the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank and elsewhere to address all the conditions that exist in the [Asian] regional economy.

“So we have got to . . . continue to press to promulgate the economic program that will restabilize the Indonesian economy . . . and then figure out how we . . . send the right signals to show that the repression of dissent that we’re seeing is not acceptable,” he said.

McCurry acknowledged, however, that a less authoritarian regime would have had an easier time imposing the economic hardships demanded by the IMF in its economic reform program.

Citing South Korea as an example of a democratic government persuading its people to accept stringent IMF reforms, McCurry said, “The more that there is trust that the government is pursuing a path that’s necessary . . . the more likely it is that people will accept and accommodate the kinds of changes that have to occur.”

There is a twist in the Indonesian events: U.S. pressure on Indonesia for economic reform has created the need for U.S. pressure on Indonesia for political reform.

In January, Clinton dispatched envoys to persuade a reluctant Suharto to accept a $43-billion IMF rescue package that demanded cuts in government spending; reductions in subsidies that restrained the prices of gasoline, bus fares and other essentials; reform of the banking system; and abandonment of construction projects that benefited Suharto’s family.

Suharto’s acceptance of the package, however, resulted in higher prices, which set off protests. That, in turn, galvanized the military and police into suppressing the opposition. As a result, Clinton sent envoys back to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, in recent weeks to pressure the Suharto government to ease its handling of dissidents.

Clinton would find it awkward now to punish the Indonesians by withholding economic assistance that he pressured the Suharto regime into accepting.

The U.S. has taken one concrete action against Indonesia as a protest against political repression: On Friday, the Pentagon terminated a planned three-week combat training exercise with the Indonesian army after only one week.

But the administration was placating Congress as much as it was punishing Indonesia. Some lawmakers were infuriated a month ago when they discovered that the Pentagon had conducted 41 combat training exercises since 1993--despite a congressional ban on military aid to Indonesia after the Suharto regime massacred separatists in the East Timor region. Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said the exercises appeared to be “a dramatic end run around the rules Congress carefully prescribed.”

On the same day the Pentagon suspended the exercises, the U.S. Export-Import Bank reassured the Indonesians of U.S. friendship by approving a $1-billion loan to insure Indonesian exporters selling goods here.

Analysts outside the administration agree that the United States must follow both a political and an economic track in its policy toward Indonesia. But there is much disagreement about how much emphasis must be put on each.

Arguing that “there isn’t much the administration can do on political reform without running afoul of domestic affairs” in Indonesia, Adam Schwarz, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, described U.S. policy in the Southeast Asian archipelago as a “difficult challenge” that “the administration is playing . . . reasonably well.”

But Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director for Human Rights Watch / Asia, said the Indonesian nongovernmental organizations, civic associations, pressure groups and service clubs “that we work closest with believe that the economic situation is not resolvable without resolving the political issues.”

The disturbances in Indonesia also are providing new ammunition to congressional opponents of the IMF. The Senate has passed a bill providing $18 billion to replenish the fund, but the legislation is stalled in the House. Smith warned Clinton in a recent letter that continued IMF assistance to Indonesia while its army suppresses dissidents “will significantly undermine support for American participation in IMF activities.”