News of student demonstrations and other signs of unrest from Indonesia have been a source of increasing concern throughout Southeast Asia. For those who remember the events of 1965, these signs suggest that Congress should act quickly to assert its will. PNS commentator Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Despite an explicit Congressional prohibition, the Pentagon continues to train the "Kopassus Red Berets." This elite Indonesian army unit was chiefly responsible for the human rights violations in East Timor -- violations that led Congress to ban training in 1992.

With Indonesia facing growing political unrest, the Pentagon action puts the United States at risk of being involved in further atrocities.

Indonesia's situation today recalls the last days of the Sukarno era more than thirty years ago. Then, as now, political unrest has been aggravated by economic disruption and inflation. Then, as now, tensions have been building between the regime and the international community, above all the United States.

These same conditions in 1965 produced an army intervention and a change of leadership accompanied by an army-backed massacre in which perhaps over a million civilians were murdered. That grim memory lends importance to another important similarity -- in 1965 and in 1998, most members of the U.S. Congress believed they had terminated U.S. military training for Indonesian troops when it was in fact being continued covertly.

In 1965, the U.S. administration was motivated by a desire to maintain contact with Indonesia's officer corps, which it regarded as a more secure ideological ally than Sukarno, then head of state.

This political motive was spelled out in a secret memo to President Johnson dated July 17, 1964, a year before the coup and massacre. "Our aid to Indonesia. . . is not helping Indonesia militarily. It is, however, permitting us to maintain some contact with key elements in Indonesia which are interested in and capable of resisting Communist takeover. We think this is of vital importance to the entire Free World."

Defense Department officials in 1998 said the training program was a way to "gain influence with successive generations of Indonesia officers."

Before 1965, this covert U.S. training of foreign soldiers was mostly in the area called "civic action." This was in fact a cover -- in Indonesia as in Vietnam --- for psychological warfare or "psywar." Psywar in turn became a euphemism for techniques of terror, including massacre.

The Pentagon's action presents a challenge to our own constitution as well. Congressional votes to limit aid have been thwarted repeatedly over the last four decades. In 1998, there is a risk that, if Congress does not reassert its will, history will repeat itself.

In February Admiral Joseph Prueher, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, said of Indonesia, "There is no economic and political stability. We're trying to work in an economic, political and military way to be as supportive as we can to try to bring this back in line."

A number of recent VIP visitors to Indonesia, such as Defense Secretary William Cohen, have made a point of visiting Army General Prabowo. Until recently, Prabowo -- who graduated top of his class at Fort Benning, Ga. -- headed the elite Kopassus Red Beret command which has been chiefly responsible for the human rights violations in East Timor.

These violations led to the Congressional ban on training in 1992, yet Kopassus is one group the Pentagon has continued to train. Early this year, journalists reported Prabowo was helping to instigate anti-Chinese rioting, of the sort which in 1965 preceded a more general massacre. He is widely regarded as a candidate to succeed Suharto if there is a change of leadership.

The Pentagon certainly knows the implications of dealing with Prabowo and Kopassus, a unit notorious for terror, murder, rape, and torture. Yet, when Congress banned training under the usual Pentagon program, the Pentagon quietly kept on training Kopassus under a different program.

The time is right for Congress to reassert its will in the matter of banning U.S. aid to Indonesian units that have been involved in major human rights violations. Such a move would also send a strong message to other armies benefiting from U.S. training: that the times are changing, and the forces for democracy in Washington will no longer tolerate massacres, death squads, and torture.

And that would strengthen the forces of democracy and the rule of law everywhere.