Oz-RI patient on improved ties

By Peter Kerr

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesians may gain some comfort from knowing that their confusion and exasperation over President Abdurrahman Wahid's erratic leadership, and the current political mire, is shared by their neighbors in Australia.

What has become known as Abdurrahman's on-again off-again trip to Australia has been canceled for the fourth time. Or perhaps it was the fifth -- there is some uncertainty even on this, due to the opaque nature of the President's pronouncements.

Again, the red carpet for what would be the first visit by an Indonesian leader in 27 years has been put on hold.

But striking about this latest reversal, despite some embarrassment in both countries that Abdurrahman has visited up to 55 other nations while still neglecting Australia, has been the measured response on both sides.

The Australian press raised the usual concerns that efforts to rebuild relations between Jakarta and Canberra would be damaged, but acknowledged along with politicians from both countries the pressures on Abdurrahman at home.

The continuing message from Australia -- despite public bewilderment at the President's actions, and fears from some Indonesia watchers that he has added fuel to anti-Jakarta sentiment -- is that the bilateral relationship remains to be built upon with patience over the long-term.

While Abdurrahman's political future is in doubt, Australian officials would not speculate this week on the prospect of the historic trip to Canberra being made by Megawati Soekarnoputri as Indonesia's first female president.

Indeed they maintained that Australia was ready to greet Abdurrahman at a moment's notice.

But as lecturers Scott Burchill and Damien Kingsbury noted in The Jakarta Post earlier this week, another element of the Australia-Indonesia dynamic is likely to change significantly as Canberra anticipates a change of power by the end of the year.

With Prime Minister John Howard suffering in opinion polls, the Labor Party led by Kim Beazley is expected to win office, and offers to bring with it a renewed engagement with Indonesia and the rest of Asia.

Beazley has long criticized Howard for not taking the initiative to travel to Indonesia, claiming the Prime Minister waited too long to help salve the wounds caused by Australia's military role in East Timor in 1999.

Labor MP and former diplomat Kevin Rudd, a rising star with the party who has been allowed the running on many foreign affairs issues, told a Jakarta conference on Indonesia-Australia relations last month that Beazley saw the two countries as "partners in democracy".

Australia viewed the maneuvering in the legislature and the People's Consultative Assembly as normal: "Democracy is a messy business," Rudd said.

He went on to give assurances that, despite concern at the conference about the emerging Indonesian democracy and bilateral relations, among Australians aged below 40 there were "no fears at all, absolutely none" over the security relationship.

"When Labor wins the election there will be regional engagement: Evanism, Keatingism, Hawkism all wrapped together," Rudd enthused of the years under Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and foreign minister Gareth Evans.

"We'll find some different wrapping paper but essentially that will be it."

His optimism overlooked what might be a first hurdle for a Beazley government: reconciling its pro-active appoach with the stance of Labor on issues such as East Timor -- particularly the insistence that those responsible for human rights abuses face justice -- and the independence movement in Irian Jaya.

Labor's shadow foreign minister Laurie Brereton has been outspoken on East Timor and was responsible for reversing Labor's policy that supported Indonesia moving into East Timor in 1975.

Meanwhile, Labor federal president Greg Sword, who is also vice president of the powerful Labor-supporting Australian Council of Trade Unions, signed a memorandum of understanding last year with the West Papua movement.

Unlike Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Brereton agreed to meet West Papuan leaders last year, but took pains to emphasize that Labor's policy did not challenge Indonesian sovereignty over Irian Jaya. Brereton also spoke to Sword after he signed the memorandum.

Labor Party officials, increasingly attuned to the likelihood of an election victory, were more circumspect this week than Rudd about the specifics of a Beazley government's approach to Indonesia.

But if Labor could break the stalemate over the visit by a head of state in either direction -- or if Abdurrahman undertook his own trip, albeit under criticism for being a lame duck -- a way forward might be found.

For while experts from both countries agree that Australia and Indonesia both have much to gain from renewed dialog, some are frustrated that opportunities are being missed.

Academic Jamie Mackie told the Jakarta conference there had been a shift in Australia from "considerable optimism after the overthrow of Soeharto to alarm over violence in East Timor and weariness over Irian and Maluku".

There also had been a shift "between the friends of Indonesia and what I would not call the enemies of Indonesia, but the critics. The hand of the critics was somewhat strengthened in 1999".

Mackie said he agreed with the former ambassador to Australia, S. Wiryono, that Indonesia could help Australia find its place in the region.

Another academic, Richard Robison, said the first challenge for Australia was to identify a paradigm for the bilateral relationship, then to "bring those parties concerned with Indonesia together".

Deep changes such as Indonesia's economic crisis, the overthrow of Soeharto and the independence vote in East Timor meant Australia had lost its blueprint for relations with Indonesia.

"Does Indonesia matter any more?" was a question being raised because of the vacuum.

"The challenge now is to find a new paradigm, and in a sense it should be easier now that we have a commonality in democracy," Robison said.

With the United States spelling out its desire for Australia to "take the lead" in relations with Indonesia, and with Indonesia facing more economic turmoil and regional instability, the two neighbors can look forward to some complex diplomatic challenges.

The writer is Deputy Foreign Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. He is spending four months at The Jakarta Post under a Medialink fellowship, funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute.