Indonesia offers help on population

Indonesia offers help on population

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto called on other developing
countries to close ranks with Indonesia and rely more on their
own resources in development efforts.

Addressing the three-day population meeting of 11 developing
countries yesterday, Soeharto offered to share Indonesia's
experience in a number of development efforts, including the
management of family planning and population.

He described the "Partners in Population and Development: A
South-South Initiative" to the participants as an example of how
exchange of expertise and success can greatly benefit both the
givers and recipients.

"It is our firm conviction that through cooperation there will
be an increasingly greater number of developing countries that
can do a lot of things," he told the meeting which included
Kenyan Vice President Dr. George Saitoti.

"It's precisely by subscribing to such principles of
partnership that we continue to seriously bolster international
cooperation," he said.

"However, we are all aware that South-South cooperation alone
is not enough," he said. "Hopefully this will be an international
cooperation that also involves the advanced industrial countries,
based on mutual respect and sincerity."

Soeharto's speech reiterated Indonesia's stance that the
developing countries should rely more on one another, but that
the developed countries should also offer more assistance.

Soeharto suggested a trilateral cooperation scheme wherein a
donor country finances cooperation between two developing
countries.

He also spelled out Indonesia's progress in population
control, which has enticed more than 2,000 senior participants
from 75 countries to visit and learn from its family planning
management.

Indonesia has cut infant mortality by almost a third from 145
per 1,000 in the 1970s to 55 per 1,000 today, and slowed down its
annual population growth rate from 2.5 percent to 1.6 percent,
Soeharto said.

Improvement

Indonesia, the world's fourth largest nation with a population
of around 185 million, has also managed to reduce the average
number of children in its families from 5.6 in 1970 to around
2.8 children at present.

Soeharto described yesterday how the success of family
planning has allowed the government to shift the focus of its
attention to the improvement of the quality of life for families,
including more educational opportunities for children.

The meeting is a step toward the International Conference on
Population Development, to be held next month in Cairo, Egypt.

The meeting, which is also attended by representatives of a
number of donor agencies, proceeded to explore ways of
strengthening the existing cooperation and modalities of
partnership, as well as funding arrangements.

Led by State Minister of Population Haryono Suyono, it also
discussed the plan to establish a secretariat to manage the flow
of assistance among the participating countries.

Sally Shelton of the United States Agency for International
Development expressed support for the developing countries'
initiative, which is expected to have wider impacts than the
"traditional" relations of developed countries in the North and
developing countries in the South.

Such South-South cooperation also tends to be more flexible
and adaptable to individual countries' specific needs than the
traditional forms of cooperation, she said.

Today the participants will discuss a draft statement to be
presented in Cairo. Later on in the day they will leave on a
field trip to Bali. (swe)