RPT-Indonesia's Megawati defends VP pick on rights issue

(Repeats story sent late on Friday with no changes to text) (For five facts on Megawati click on [ID:nJAK486076])

By Ed Davies and Sunanda Creagh

JAKARTA, July 3 (Reuters) - Indonesian presidential candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri defended on Friday her choice of a running mate accused of human rights abuses, saying he had taken responsibility and there was a need to move on.

Indonesians go to the polls on July 8, with incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono well ahead of Megawati and a third candidate, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, in most opinion polls. [ID:nIDPRESPOL]

Megawati, 62, is running with Prabowo Subianto, who was fired from the army in 1998 after troops under his command kidnapped and tortured pro-democracy activists during President Suharto's rule. He is barred from entering the United States.

"Don't forget that Prabowo has been stigmatised as a human rights abuser, but he has taken full responsibility for that and has moved on," she told a lunch with foreign correspondents.

The pairing of former president Megawati and Prabowo would once have seemed unthinkable.

As chair of the PDI-P party, Megawati was Indonesia's leading opposition figure in the dying days of the Suharto era.

Prabowo, a former head of the special forces, was once married to one of Suharto's daughters and was an integral part of the so-called "New Order" establishment under Suharto.