Indonesia not a threat to Australia: Ambassador
Indonesia not a threat to Australia: Ambassador
Ivy Susanti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Australian Ambassador to Indonesia David Ritchie questioned a defense think-tank report released in Canberra on Wednesday, which said Australians believed Indonesia poses the greatest threat to their national security.
A study of opinion polls on security issues conducted by the independent Australian Strategic Policy Institute -- a strategic and defense think-tank -- showed that Indonesia was perceived as a far greater threat than other countries in the region.
"I think neither of those things are actually true," Ritchie told a gathering of editors and business executives in Jakarta on Wednesday.
He said the report indicated misperceptions among Australians about Indonesia but that these misunderstandings existed in both countries. "There is a lack of knowledge on both sides on the nature of both the countries," Ritchie said.
There were some Australians who had little or no knowledge about the nature of Islam in Indonesia, the country's culture or its political system, Ritchie said. There were also Indonesians who did not understand the nature of Australian society, he said.
However, despite this both Indonesians and Australians had joined together to fight terrorism, he said.
Ritchie said Australians had sympathized with Indonesians -- especially the Balinese -- after the Bali bombing in October 2002, instead of strongly criticizing the Indonesian government, which they believed could have done something to prevent terror attacks.
"That shows more than what a lot of the surveys show," said Ritchie, who has been serving in Jakarta for almost two years.
The members of the al-Qaeda affiliated Jamaah Islamiyah group -- of mostly Indonesians -- were blamed for the bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, on Bali.
The institute surveyed opinion polls on defense issues dating back to the 1960s and found Australians now saw less chance of a foreign security threat than at any time during the past 30 years.
It cited a 2001 survey showing that 31 percent of Australians believed Indonesia would very likely to pose a threat to Australia's security, compared with 9 percent for China, 6 percent for Malaysia and 5 percent for Japan, AP reported.
"However, to the extent that the public identifies a security threat to Australia, there is a greater consensus than ever before that the threat comes from one country: Indonesia," it was quoted by AFP as saying.
"Notwithstanding improved bilateral relations particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, the public's concern about Indonesia has increased almost consistently since opinion polls first began to track it in the late 1960s," the report said.
"This worry does not seem to be justified, either by Jakarta's intent, or by the level of Indonesian military capability. In part the poll data reflects the recent experience of instability in East Timor (in 1999)."
The report also attempted to gauge Australian attitudes toward casualties in major military operations.
It found the public would accept unlimited casualties if the military were directly protecting Australia from external threat. But the tolerance for fatalities declined markedly for lesser operations against drug dealers, human traffickers, in peacekeeping operations or when supporting the United Nations.
About one-third of Australians were not ready to accept any casualties at all in these operations, the report found.
The institute was established by the Australian government.