'I just have a different style,' says Downer

'I just have a different style,' says Downer

JAKARTA (JP): March ushered in a new chapter in bilateral
relations between Indonesia and Australia with the election of a
conservative government under Prime Minister John Howard.

In his first official visit abroad as Australia's new foreign
minister, Alexander Downer, 44, talks with The Jakarta Post about
development aid, the mutual security agreement and the membership
of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

JP: How was your visit to Indonesia?

Alexander Downer: It's been an important visit...we want to
reinforce the view to the Indonesian government that despite...
there being an election and a change of government, there remains
a very strong commitment from the new Australian government to
Asia as our first foreign policy priority.

JP: How is your tenure going to be different from your
predecessor?

Downer: People often ask me that question and, if I may say
so, I find it a very odd question. We are two completely
different people who will do things in different ways. I just
have a different style and a different manner.

Just because I'm a different person and come from a different
political party doesn't mean that my predecessor and I disagree
on everything. And one of the things that we have always both
agreed on was the importance of the relationship with Indonesia.

JP: The Australian government has announced it will cut A$8
billion off government spending within a two-year period. How
does this affect the development aid to and projects in
Indonesia?

Downer: We are reviewing our aid program. We will be reducing
overall expenditure on aid, yes.

But how that reduction will affect the different countries to
which we provide aid at the moment or how it will affect our
contributions to multilateral aid organizations is yet to be
determined.

JP: Is that to say there might possibly be a lower level of
aid coming to Indonesia in the future?

Downer: It remains to be seen.

JP: You have expressed a desire to build on the mutual
security agreement between Indonesia and Australia and look at
ways of developing a defense cooperation program. How would you
go about this?

Downer: There are two aspects to this. There's the defense
cooperation program which already exists and, within the confines
of our budget, we would like to keep developing that defense
cooperation.

JP: And the second aspect?

Downer: We also want to develop a dialog with Indonesia about
regional security issues. Of course there are such conversations
already but we would like to develop that dialog.

We have shared security interests because we are side by side
and I think we should be frank with each other and talk about our
assessments of, broadly speaking, the regional security
situation. So I think that's something we can build on within the
framework of the mutual security agreement.

JP: More countries are applying to join the ARF. What is
Australia's position on India's application?

Downer: Australia would be sympathetic to India's application
to join the ARF and I would anticipate a consensus developing for
Indian membership in the ARF.

JP: And Myanmar?

Downer: If there is a consensus for Burma (Myanmar) to join,
(then) we won't stand in the way of that.

JP: What about Britain and France?

Downer: The European Union (EU) has two seats on the ARF at
the moment in the form of the Commission and the Presidency. The
question of British participation is one that needs to be looked
at in the context of the number of seats that the EU has and is
something that needs further discussion.

We're certainly...not opposed to British membership but we
don't want to see the European Union members becoming too
numerous.

So one of the issues that they need to think through is the
extent to which they want both those seats to be taken by
European Union institutions, or whether maybe one of the member
states, like Britain, would have a better claim to one of the
seats.(mds)