Malaysian minister fears breakup of RI

Malaysian minister fears breakup of RI

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): A Malaysian minister on Tuesday raised the
prospect of neighboring Indonesia breaking up as a state and said
its crisis poses a grave threat to the region.

Defense Minister Najib Razak said globalization was the
"trigger point" that led to the collapse of president Soeharto's
government in May 1998 after 32 years but this was also
exacerbated by serious internal problems.

"Since the economic crisis, the country has been experiencing
severe instability, with the possibility of the break-up of the
state -- the Balkanization of Indonesia," Najib told a conference
on globalization.

"The solution is not to have too radical a change but managed
reforms. Otherwise, it's like opening a Pandora's box which will
unleash forces you cannot control."

Najib, in an apparent reference to the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), said multilateral institutions appeared to be "far
more concerned with promoting their ideologies and for their
prestige and status, rather than being practical in saving the
state and lives."

Indonesia must build a "strong, effective but benevolent"
leadership to overcome the situation, Najib said, adding that the
Indonesian crisis posed a grave threat to the region and urged
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to promote
greater security ties.

"Today, national sovereignty is being challenged in the most
surreptitious form. Multinational institutions have become very
powerful to the point of having power over sovereign nations," he
said.

"We need to strengthen our domestic and regional resilience."
Najib said the combined forces of the 10-member ASEAN plus China,
South Korea and Japan and the proposed Asian Monetary Fund, would
help the region initiate and coordinate policies to withstand
pressure.

"The biggest challenge facing nation states today is to deal
with this latent though potent force of globalization," he said.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.