Wiranto asked to quit, `no response'

Wiranto asked to quit, `no response'
Agence France Presse

JAKARTA, FEB 4: Indonesia's Defence Minister said on Friday he had relayed an instruction from President Abdurrahman Wahid to former armed forces chief General Wiranto to quit the cabinet, but there was no response. The two had therefore agreed to await Wahid's return from an extended overseas tour on February 13 to resolve the tense four-day-old standoff, Minister Yuwono Sudarsono told a press conference.

``There was no response ... we have agreed to wait for Mr President,'' Sudarsono said of Wiranto's refusal to resign as requested by Wahid after a domestic probe found Wiranto ``morally responsible'' for last year's violence in East Timor.

He said he had passed on the resignation order to Wiranto, who is currently serving as senior security minister, on Thursday. ``Yesterday morning I fulfilled (the) President's instruction to convey to Mr Wiranto that he should resign,'' Sudarsono, a civilian, said at the conference in his office in the ministry of defence. ``I have already faithfully carried out thetask to deliver the message. I urge all of us to wait patiently until Mr President returns home,'' he added.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Army Chief General Tyasno Sudarto said that the Army ``as an institution'' would not launch a coup in support of its old chief, but called the situation ``dangerous and uncertain''. ``I guarantee that as an institution, the Army will not launch a coup,'' Sudarto told journalists while inspecting an Army storage depot in central Jakarta.

But Sudarto warned that: ``The current situation is dangerous and uncertain, therefore, I'm calling on the public to think clearly and not to be easily provoked by unfounded rumours.'' ``I have to be able to convince the Army to remain solid ... until now I haven't seen any tendency for the institution (the Army) to make its own move,'' he said, referring to a belief held by some that the Army, whose power the President had been diluting, is less loyal to Wahid than the Navy and the Air Force.

At a commanders' call at military headquarters inthe Jakarta suburb of Cilangkap early Friday morning, armed forces (TNI) Chief Admiral Widodo Adisucipto repeated the appeal for calm. ``I am imploring (the public) not to spread rumours that could worsen the (country's) situation,'' Widodo said. Asked about charges by Wahid that a group of generals had held a secret meeting in West Jakarta on Wednesday night, Widodo said that the meeting could not have been held without his knowledge. ``On the issue of a meeting, within the TNI structure ... no meetings could be held without the knowledge of the TNI chief,'' he said.

Military sources said on Friday there was a protocol problem in the way Wahid relayed the message to Wiranto, in that as senior minister for security and poltics he was not subordinate to Sudarsono. But the sources said the main sticking point for Wiranto appeared to be that he felt that stepping down would be seen as an admission of guilt. Indonesian Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is in charge of the government in Wahid's absence,has so far made no comment.

But the fears of a coup in Jakarta appeared to have eased somewhat on Friday and at midday the rapid downslide of the financial markets over the past three days had stopped. At noon the Jakarta Stock Exchange composite index, which had been flirting with the 600 level, was up just over 12 points or almost two percent up at 626.366 after the steep losses of the past two days.