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Jakarta. Visiting US Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates announced on Thursday that the US Department of Defense was lifting a decade-old ban on cooperation with the Army’s elite Kopassus special forces that was put in place over alleged human rights abuses by the unit.

“The United States will begin a measured and gradual program of security cooperation activities with the Indonesian Army Special Forces,” Gates said during a news conference at the President’s Office in Jakarta after meeting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

He said the decision was made as “a result of Indonesian military reforms over the past decade, the ongoing professionalization of the TNI [the Indonesian Armed Forces], and recent actions taken by the Ministry of Defense to address human rights issues.”

“I understand there’s been a dramatically declining number of violations of human rights,” Gates said, adding that the US government was “responding to the progress.”

The initial stages, Gates said, could include allowing Kopassus to participate in select conferences and events involving non-lethal subjects like rule of law, human rights and the military decision-making process.

“I noted to the president that these initial steps will take place within the limits of US law and do not signal any lessening of the importance we place on human rights and accountability,” the defense secretary said.

When it imposed the ban in 1999, the United States said that members of Kopassus had been accused of repeated human rights abuses while responding to pro-democracy activists in Papua, Aceh and East Timor between 1997 and 1999.

“Our ability to expand upon these initial steps will depend on continued implementation of reforms within Kopassus and TNI as a whole,” Gates said.

The spokesman for the Indonesian military, Maj. Gen. Aslizar Tanjung, Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Suwarno and Henry Willem, the head of the TNI’s legal affairs bureau, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The US Congress bars the United States from training military units that are credibly believed to have engaged in human rights abuses, unless the units take steps to improve.

Defense officials in Washington were quoted by The New York Times as saying that the American military would have limited engagement with Kopassus to start, perhaps only in staff-to-staff meetings, and that there would be no immediate military training.

The officials said that the Defense Department was not seeking funding from Congress for the renewed engagement with Kopassus.

The US State Department would be in charge of vetting individual members of Kopassus before allowing them to participate in training with the American military.

Both Gates and Yudhoyono said they had discussed a broad range of bilateral, regional and global security issues.

Earlier in the morning, Yudhoyono asked the country’s military and law-enforcement agencies to seek better regional security cooperation.

“In the last three months I have been communicating, exchanging ideas and consulting with some nations and heads of government regarding security in this region,” Yudhoyono said.

He asked the military to take a more active role in ensuring regional security, especially in the South China Sea, where a number of countries have overlapping boundary claims.

“This area needs greater attention because, despite the relatively stable and secure conditions in the last 10 to 20 years, the region is still a source of potential conflict and clash points,” Yudhoyono said.