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)