Newly inaugurated Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih said Friday she would follow in the steps of her predecessor by maintaining a suspension of the US Navy's Naval Medical Research Unit (Namru-2) laboratory in Jakarta.

Speaking after the first Cabinet meeting of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's second term in office, Endang said the Health Ministry's cooperation with the United States would only con-tinue under a civilian biomedical research lab called the Indonesia-United States Center for Medical Research (IUC).

"We had to close *Namru-2* because it was a military unit," said the Harvard-educated minister.