Diplomat says diplomacy is everybody's business

DEPOK, West Java (JP): Senior diplomat Soendaroe Rachmat called on experts yesterday to examine Indonesia's foreign policies and suggest improvements, so that the country could answer its critics abroad.

"Diplomacy is much too important a business to be left to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs alone," he said during a seminar on Indonesian foreign policy at the University of Indonesia which opened here yesterday.

While acknowledging that the service has been severely criticized from abroad, he said that one of the first steps that should be taken towards improvement is to hold public debates to study the existing policies.

"There hasn't been any debates held to really analyze Indonesia's official foreign policy," he said. "If the official policies are not analyzed (and corrected), then we can't expect much from unofficial attempts at diplomacy."

The seminar was one in a series of events held by the university's international relations department to commemorate its 10th anniversary.

The seminar also featured Vice Governor of the Institute of National Resilience Juwono Sudarsono, who said that the global flow of information has adversely affected Indonesia's diplomacy.

"We are in a weak position in this ongoing competition of image creation," he said. "Foreign TV stations like Cable News Network are displaying our bad side without bothering to report the whole story."

He cited as an example the footage of a recent clash between the security officers and supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party's leader Megawati Soekarnoputri which some foreign newscasts have been showing for the past several days.

"CNN only showed the harsh actions that the military took against the supporters. It did not show the soldiers who also suffered injuries in the rioting."

Juwono, who is also a professor of international relations at the university's School of Social and Political Sciences, said there are groups of people who maintain negative perspectives about Indonesia, no matter what the country does to improve its image.

"There's a tremendous anti-Indonesian sentiment among many groups of people abroad. No matter how hard we try to talk sense into them, they will still view us in contempt," he said.

Juwono agreed with Soendaroe that building a good image of the country should not be left to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs alone. "The ministry has its limits," he said. Besides, "our foreign policy is centralized and hinges on the President as the chief of our diplomatic corps."

Another speaker, Kusnanto Anggoro from the Centre of Strategic and International Studies, said he doubted whether the ministry was able to withstand the rush of globalization, and that changes could soon be made effectively.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is but one component in the whole decision-making process here," he said. "It can't even do anything to change the current tradition of having to give ambassadorial posts to Armed Forces members."

The Department of International Relations at the University of Indonesia was established in 1985. (06)