Hassan calls for more debt relief on visit to London<\/p>\n
Peter Walker, Agence France-Presse\/London<\/p>\n
Indonesia's foreign minister Hassan Wirayuda, on a visit to
\nLondon, called on Monday for more debt relief for his tsunami-
\ndevastated country to ensure the disaster did not derail other
\nnational priorities.<\/p>\n
Speaking after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
\nForeign Secretary Jack Straw and Chancellor of the Exchequer
\nGordon Brown, Hassan stopped short of calling for Indonesia's
\nforeign debt to be canceled.<\/p>\n
He warned, however, that more was needed than a current plan
\nto freeze debt payments on bilateral debts owed by countries
\naffected by the Dec. 26 catastrophe, which killed more than
\n100,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a joint press conference with Straw at the
\nForeign Office in London, Hassan said his country sought \"any
\nschemes that would allow us operating space\".<\/p>\n
\"We need to focus on the reconstruction in Aceh, but we do not
\nwant other programs to be affected,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he meant debt cancellation or rescheduling,
\nrather than just a moratorium, Wirayuda said his government had
\nbeen \"very careful to talk about debt cancellations or debt
\nrescheduling, because in the past 30 to 35 years we have been
\nfaithful payers of our debts\".<\/p>\n
Jakarta was asking the Paris Club of creditor nations \"not
\nonly to look at the problem that we are facing in Aceh, but to
\nlook at the much larger picture, the situation faced by the newly
\nelected, democratically elected (Indonesian) government\", he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
\"While there is a need to focus on Aceh, we would like to see
\nthat other national priorities and programs are not affected
\nnegatively.\"<\/p>\n
Hassan declined to give a specific figure for how much debt
\nrelief his government sought.<\/p>\n
But he added: \"I simply want to quote the figure that as of
\nnow, we allocate 50 percent of our budget for debt servicing. It
\ntells you a lot about the situation we are facing.\"<\/p>\n
Hassan left Jakarta on Sunday for a visit to Britain, France,
\nItaly, and Germany to seek clarity on international offers of a
\ndebt moratorium.<\/p>\n
With an external debt of US$132 billion, Indonesia has said it
\nhopes debt relief will be proffered without conditions.<\/p>\n
France said on Sunday that the Paris Club of creditor nations,
\nwhich meets on Wednesday in the French capital, had agreed on a
\nmoratorium on repayments for countries hit by the tsunami that
\nkilled at least 156,000 people in nearly a dozen nations.<\/p>\n
Straw noted that while Britain had suffered 50 confirmed
\nfatalities in the disaster, with almost 400 more nationals
\npresumed dead, \"our losses are dwarfed by those of Indonesia\".<\/p>\n
\"The terrible events of Dec. 26 represent a natural disaster
\non a scale which none of us has ever witnessed before, and we
\npray will never witness again,\" he added.<\/p>",
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