1. ATTORNEY GENERAL LOBBYING US COUNTERPART TO HAVE MALUKU SEPARATIST DEPORTED.

Indonesian Attorney General MA Rachman said, he had met his US counterpart, John Ashcroft, about the possibility of the US deporting convicted separatist Maluku Souvereignty Front (FKM) leader Alex manuoutty to Indonesia. Manuputty was arrested and sentenced to four years in jail for separatist activities in Maluku last year but he managed to escape from prison and to flee to the US. Speaking at a hearing with a House of Repreentatives' commission here, Rachman said during his meeting with Ashcroft he had also shown some of the proof of Manuputty's wrongdoing. But so far, there had been no response from the US government, said Rachman who did not say when his meeting with the US attorney general had taken place. Rachman added he had also coordinated his effort to have Manuputty brought back to Indonesia with Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirayudha who was expected to help persuade the US governemnt through diplomatic channels. Some 13 FKM supporters, including Manuputty's wife and daughter, were recently arrested in Ambon, Maluku's provincial capital, in connection with riots that erupted there on April 25 following a parade by FKM people to mark the 54th anniversary of the secessionist "RMS' (Republic of South Maluku) movement. The RMS anniversary activities included a ceremony where FKM general secretary Mozes Tuanakota read out an E-mailed message from Manuputty. More than 30 people were killed and 200 others injured in the riots.
Asked about the hunt for two other convicts who had fled abroad, namely businessmen Eddy Tanzil and Samadikun Hartono, Rachman said the Attorney General 's Office was keeping up the search.
"One of things we have done was to lobby the Chinese attorney general to help locate them and send them back Indonesia," Rachman said. Tanzil and Hartono were believed to have fled to China where they were once known to own businesses.

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2. REPORTS US PLANNING TO STATION TROOPS IN MALACCA STRAITS DENIED.

A US official here has denied the truth of reports that his government was planning to station troops in the Malacca Straits to fight terrorism and piracy.
"There is no such plan," US Consul General in Surabaya Philip Antweiler said after dedicating an "American Corner'" in the campus of Airlangga University.
Earlier, Indonesian Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Bernard Kent Sondakh expressed strong opposition to the alleged US plan to deploy marines in the Malacca Straitst.
"We only heard rumours and the US Ambassador to Indonesia recently denied them. However, as the chief of the Indonesian Navy I had to remind our men to always watch out," he said. He added if the rumours were true the US plan would be against international law. "We must always dare to speak out against anything that violates our souvereignty," he said.

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3. PAKISTANI FOREIGN MINISTER WELCOMES ARF'S DECISION.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri Thursday welcomed the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) senior official's decision to recommend Pakistan's admission to the forum.
Senior officials from the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) had on Wednesday recommended in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, that Pakistan be allowed to join the security-related body at its next ministerialmeeting, scheduled to be held at Jakarta on June 30 to July 2.
"This is yet another success for Pakistan's foreign policy," Kasuri told a press conference in Islamabad.
He said the decision came close on the heels of the European Union's decision to ratify the Third Generation Agreement thereby raising the level of the country's political and economic interaction with the EU as well as notification of Pakistan as a major Non-NATO ally.
He said the ARF membership provided Pakistan a further avenue to join cooperative efforts for promotion of global peace and stability.
"We are particularly focused on strengthening the process of peace and stability in South Asia and in the greater Asia-Pacific region," Kasuri said.
He added that Pakistan's "Vision East Asia" essentially conceptualized the building of strong cooperative and institutional links with the states of North and South East Asia, especially in the economic and commercial fields.
Pakistan has been ASEAN's sectoral partner and its cooperation with the member states was confined to just a few sectors.
A statement issued after the Yogyakarta meeting said the ARF members approved Pakistan's admittance as an ARF participant, taking into account the formal and solemn assurances of Pakistan.
Pakistan had to pledge to never raise Pakistan-Indian bilateral issues as a precondition to its acceptance into ARF, Asia's closest thing to a regional security council.
ARF currently groups the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australia, China, the European Union, India, Japan, South and North Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia and the U.S.

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4. INDONESIA SEEKS COMMON ASEAN STANCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS.

Indonesia is seeking to forge a common stance on human rights among Southeast Asian countries to guard against outside intervention, an Indonesian official said.
The establishment of an ASEAN human rights commission is one element of "the ASEAN Security Community" proposed by Indonesia.
But some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations oppose the idea, foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said on the sidelines of a meeting of ASEAN senior officials.
Natalegawa said ASEAN needs a regional mechanism on human rights otherwise it will become "more irrelevant and vulnerable to extra-regional intervention."
"Our view is that we need to strengthen regional capacity in this field. By strengthening our capacity we can shield the region from outside intervention in human rights.
"If we don't have a common stance there will be a vacuum of opinion on human rights and this will pave the way for intervention," Natalegawa said.
But one unspecified country argues that ASEAN is not in the position to have a human rights commission, he said.
Natalegawa said Indonesia's proposals were in line with United Nations standards and should not be a cause for concern.
"The more you discuss the details the more people can be convinced that what we are doing is not something extraordinary or something revolutionary," he said.
Five ASEAN countries -- Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia -- featured in the United States annual report on worldwide human rights abuses issued in February.
The ASEAN Security Community was one of three "pillars" included in the Bali Concord II which was endorsed last October at the grouping's summit in Bali.
The proposals will be submitted for endorsement at the ASEAN summit in Laos this year.
Together with the creation of similar economic and socio-cultural communities, the concord lays the foundation for the creation of a European-style ASEAN Community by 2020.
Another Indonesian official, Makarim Wibisono, said discussion on the proposals will resume at an ASEAN senior officials' meeting Saturday and Sunday in Singapore and a similar meeting in Cambodia next month.
Wibisono said meeting discussed elements in the proposed ASEAN Security Community which had not been debated previously.
He described the discussion as encouraging but refused say if there were any objections to Indonesia's proposals.
Jakarta's proposals also call for the formation of an ASEAN peacekeeping force that might one day help settle disputes like those in Indonesia's Aceh province and the southern Philippines.
But Singapore has expressed reservations, arguing that ASEAN is not a security or defense organization. Vietnam is also reportedly cool to the idea.

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