INDONESIA A NEWS

Lt. General John M Brown III, U.S. Army, Pacific commanding general talks to Tentara Nasional Indonesia-Army Division Maj. Chris K. Tehuteru, 328th Infantry Battalion, Cilodong, West Java, Republic of Indonesia, TNI-AD Capt. Mike Asmi, 321st Infantry Battalion, West Java, Republic of Indonesia and U.S. Maj. Wayne Brewster, Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 1st Brigade, 25th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, Sunday during exercise Garuda Shield 07. Brown visited the Kostrad, home of the TNI-AD's 1st Infantry Division in Cilodong, West Java, Republic of Indonesia, Sunday to observe exercise Garuda Shield 07. During his time at the exercise site, he spoke with U.S. and TNI-AD Soldiers and received briefings from Col Jon Lee, U.S. exercise co-director and Maj. Gen. M. Noer Muis, TNI-AD exercise co-director. U.S. Soldiers are in Indonesia to participate in exercise Garuda Shield 07. The goals of the Command Post Exercise, which will run until April 27, are to impro

Indonesia`s National Defense Forces (TNI) and Australia`s Defense Forces (ADF) have agreed to step up their cooperation in combating terrorism through intelligence information exchange, visiting TNI Chief Marshal Djoko Suyanto said here on Thursday. Djoko Suyanto made the statement after meeting his Australian counterpart, Marshal Allan Grant (Angus) Houston and other Australian defense officials in Canberra on Thursday before leaving for Sydney to meet with Prime Minister John Howard on the same day. He said the TNI and ADF had agreed to intensify cooperation in three areas, namely humanitarian mission and disaster management, peace-keeping operations and intelligence information exchange to combat terrorism. In the counter-terrorism cooperation between the two countries, the TNI and ADF would play very strategic roles in dealing with terror threats by exchanging intelligence information. "We will not cooperate by taking joint military actions but by sharing intelligence informat

The chief of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), Syamsir Siregar, said here on Tuesday he would refer the investigation of the death of noted human rights activist Munir including the alleged involvement of one of his men to the police. "In short we refer the investigation of the case to the police," he said after attending a general lecture to mark the fifth anniversary of the Financial Transaction Analysis and Reporting (PPATK) at the presidential palace. About the alleged involvement of a BIN official at a meeting between Munir and Pollycarpus, who had recently been acquitted of a charge involvement in the murder of the activist at Changi Airport in Singapore, Siregar said "I do not know about it, and do not make it up." National Police Chief General Sutanto on the occasion reiterated that the police has a commitment to solve the case. "We will cooperate with the attorney general`s office to find evidence, witnesses and other things because we cannot let th

After 10 months of deliberations and 11 years in the planning, Indonesia's Parliament passed a new investment bill that ensures equal government treatment for foreign and domestic investors and promises to cut the costly and cumbersome red tape that inhibits many local business sectors. The new law integrates previous investment-related laws and is specifically designed to revive sagging foreign investment, especially foreign direct investment (FDI) in new industrial capacity and natural-resource extraction. The move comes as Indonesia has been hit particularly hard by China receiving the lion's share of Asia-destined foreign capital in recent years. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has pursued a business-friendly policy and stated his hope that the new investment-promotin g provisions will propel economic growth and resolve the country's pressing unemployment problem - 10.6% of the workforce is currently jobless. The issue promises to feature prominently during general e

Refleksi: http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid= 20070405. F07&irec= 6 Bricklaying in Aceh I was looking back the other day at a letter in the British newspaper The Times as written by Professor H. H. Turner in January 1925, who was challenging the government's statement that a good British bricklayer would lay 500 bricks per day which made him the best in the world.The professor claimed to have found one bricklayer who dealt with 2000 bricks in eight hours and another one who laid 890 bricks in just one hour -- one presumes the brickie ran out of steam after a while. It made me wonder just how many bricks were being laid in Aceh province, bearing in mind the climatic differences between gloomy old England and sun-drenched Indonesia. The heat factor alone could well in fact reduce the work rate by up to fifty percent, and then of course there are the incentive factors of salary and working conditions. An English bricklayer in 1925 would have earned about one

The pilot and co-pilot of a Garuda airliner that crashed on landing in Indonesia were arguing moments before the accident about the plane's speed. A senior Indonesian investigator said on Sunday that cockpit voice recordings recovered from the passenger jet showed the co-pilot wanted the pilot to go around again instead of landing.Tatang Kurniadi of Indonesia's National Transport Safety Commission told Australian television: "Absent mindedness. I worry that this accident came from the absent-mindedness of the cockpit. Kurniadi said the captain and first officer were flying together for the first time."There was also some argumentation between the co-pilot and the pilot and captain relating with the speed and flaps," he told the Nine Network.The Garuda Airlines aircraft with 140 people on board overshot the runway in the central Java city of Yogyakarta on March 7 and burst into flames, killing 21 people including five Australians.Survivors of the crash have descri