'Asian-African countries must stick to their peace agenda'

Indonesia and South Africa will together host the Asian-African Summit on Friday and Saturday. Scores of leaders of Asian and African countries are expected to attend. The Jakarta Post's Adianto P. Simamora interviewed former diplomat Roeslan Abdulgani to find out more about the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, West Java. Following is an excerpt from the interview.

Question: Could you tell us about whose idea it was to host the Asia-Africa Conference in 1955?

Answer: It was the idea of former president Sukarno. It was first presented by Indonesia's former prime minister Ali Sastroamidjojo at the Colombo Conference in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Originally, the conference was only aimed for four countries that were previously ruled by British colonial masters, namely Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon, India and Pakistan. But the initiator of the conference, Sir John Kotelawala, then prime minister of Ceylon, extended the invitation to Indonesia to attend the Colombo Conference.

Sukarno was very happy about the invitation and sent Ali to Colombo with a special message to roll the idea of hosting a meeting of Asian and African countries. He wanted to unite all Asian and African countries.

Prior to this, Sukarno said in 1928 -- just before he was put in the Sukamiskin jail in Bandung by the Dutch colonial government -- "if the liong-Sai (dragon) of China works together with the nandi (cow) of India, with the sphinx of Egypt and the peacock of Burma, with the white elephant of Siam (now Thailand), with the Hydra of Vietnam, with the tiger of the Philippines and with the banteng (bull) of Indonesia, then it is certain that international colonialism will be smashed into bits".

It was Sukarno's idea to host the Asia-Africa Conference.

What were the difficulties you faced in organizing the conference?.

Frankly speaking, Indonesia had never held such a big event before. The conference involved heads of state/government from 28 countries. There were at least three main problems we faced at that time.

The most difficult job was hotel accommodation for all the delegates. Sukarno insisted that the conference be held in Bandung. There were only two hotels in Bandung at that time and those hotels couldn't accommodate all the guests. We were forced to renovate the hotels. As the secretary-general of the conference, I tried to search for bungalows for the delegates. Fortunately, Bandung people offered their bungalows and the delegations stayed there.

The second problem was the transportation, we didn't have enough cars for all the delegations. We then had to procure additional cars.

The third problem was to determine the agenda of the conference.

Did you face any problems in inviting the leaders of Asian and African countries to Bandung?

Yes, of course, inviting the heads of state/government was not an easy job but we just did it. There were sharp divisions among the sponsoring countries on the question of China, Israel and the Central African Federation. In the end we managed to reach an agreement to invite 25 countries. So it was a surprise for us when 24 heads of state/government confirmed that they would attend the conference.

In addition to the five sponsoring countries of Burma, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, there were 24 countries participating in the conference in 1955, meaning that almost half of the countries attended the conference. At that time there were only 60 independent countries across the globe.

What were the strategic values of the conference for Indonesia?

The conference was organized as an effort to fight against the international colonialism of western countries such as Britain, Holland and France. We believed that such international colonialism must be blocked through international cooperation. This was the strategic point of the Asia-Africa Conference.

At that time, we had a Cold War between capitalism and communism blocks. The two blocks tried to seek support from countries in the world, including in Asian and African continents. Some countries supported the capitalism block sponsored by the United States while the other backed communism, which was sponsored by the Soviet Union. The aim of the conference was to oppose these two blocks and stay neutral.

One of the important results of the conference was that the 29 countries decided to stay away from these capitalist and communist blocks.

Another point was that the leaders of the Asian and African countries started to establish cooperation in economic and socio- cultural fields.

What did it mean for Indonesia's leadership?

The leadership of Indonesia was well-recognized in the international arena at that time. As you know, all members of the organizing committee of the conference were from Indonesia. Other participating countries admitted that the Indonesian people were capable of organizing such a huge conference.

Indonesia is again hosting the Asian-African Summit, what are your comments?

The total number of countries in the Asian and African continents are now far higher than in 1955. Inspired by the Ten Principles of Bandung, many countries in Africa became independent.

Currently, there are 106 countries in Asian and African continents. This is clear evidence that the majority of the world did not like the Cold War but prefer a peaceful co-existence among nations that have different political systems.

As the number of participating countries increases, the problems will also be far more complex.

There are no longer issues of capitalism and communism. The clash of ideology between capitalism and communism is over.

In my opinion, we are now facing the so-called clash of civilizations. The United States feels that they need to attack Iraq or other Islamic countries who have ample oil deposits. They don't admit this reason to us but we know that. I don't believe the U.S. attack on Iraq was simply due to terrorism, but they also want the oil reserves.

So what do you expect from the summit?

Indonesia is the host of the summit but this does not automatically mean that Indonesia will be a leader. Indonesia itself is still facing complex problems.

My expectation of this summit is that the idea of an Asian and African conference to promote peace and independence is maintained.