Aussie upbeat to boost ties with RI
Aussie upbeat to boost ties with RI
JAKARTA (JP): Australian Ambassador John McCarthy expressed
confidence that ties with Indonesia would undoubtedly improve in
the future as the two main impediments to the relationship -- the
East Timor issue and an authoritarian regime in Jakarta -- had
been removed.
"These are a couple of very real reasons why it should be
easier to nurture and sustain the relationship between these two
countries in the future," McCarthy said in his opening remarks at
a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Indonesian-
Australian relations.
With these two predicaments out of the way, the ambassador
said he had "genuine faith in the two countries to get on,
despite the cultural differences, despite the problems and
despite the difficulties of being neighbors".
McCarthy said that with the East Timor issue now beginning to
settle, a major snag which often came up between Jakarta and
Canberra had been removed.
"I think that East Timor has been one question that has really
affected the relationship over the past quarter of a century," he
said during the conference which was held here on Friday.
The ambassador also highlighted the democratic changes in
Indonesia as another key element to boosting ties in the future.
"If there has been an impediment to the way Australians regard
Indonesia, apart from East Timor, it has been the fact that the
regime here, until recently, would I think, by most definitions
be termed authoritarian," he remarked.
"A government with which it was less easy for Australia to
deal".
But the new era of ongoing political reform has now ushered in
new hope.
"All this means that the manner in which Australia will regard
Indonesia and deal with Indonesia will be much less unharmed by
the problems of a different sort of government which we were not
really comfortable with, which existed before."
Ties between the two neighbors have gone through volatile
phases in recent years.
After several years of an amiable relationship in the early
1990s, signified by the close friendship between then prime
minister Paul Keating and Indonesia's president Soeharto,
relations quickly soured over the last two years.
Officials at the time used to brush off spats, particularly
concerning the East Timor issue, by saying that the overall
framework of ties was built around a cobweb-type relationship
which was not merely hinged on East Timor alone.
Keating himself continuously lauded Indonesia as the most
important country to Australia.
However, the ascendancy of Prime Minister John Howard brought
a new shift in bilateral ties.
Following the resignation of Soeharto, Howard's government
presented in December 1998 a letter to then president B.J.
Habibie which signified a shift in Australia's absolute support
of Jakarta's sovereignty over East Timor.
By all accounts, the letter upset Habibie and brought about a
series of events which quickly led to a deterioration in the
relationship.
During the post-ballot period in East Timor, many Indonesians
were upset at Australia's overzealous approach to the issue,
lacking any sensitivity to the domestic turmoil Indonesia was
going through at the time.
President Abdurrahman Wahid, until recently, expressed an
abhorrence of the Australian leadership, describing his
counterpart as childish.
It was only after the visit of Australian Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer here last week that the two governments began
patching up ties.
McCarthy expressed hope that he would see a renaissance of
ties "having, I think, suffered, to put it mildly, something of a
downturn".
During the conference Indonesian Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab
refrained from any accusatory statements about the past year's
worsening of relations.
"The relationship has been marked by peaks and valleys and it
has had to weather many storms. But even during its most
difficult periods, the survival of our relations was never in
question," Alwi said. (01)