Poland-RI to hold defense exhibition
Ivy Susanti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Poland and Indonesia are planning to hold a joint exhibition of military equipment in Jakarta by the end of November, a senior Polish official said in Jakarta on Tuesday.
The exhibition plan has surfaced nine months after the two countries signed a declaration on technical cooperation in military affairs, during Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski's visit to Indonesia in February.
"(There is) a recent agreement about cooperation in the military industry, and maybe they'll organize an exhibition of military equipment, which would be held in Jakarta by the end of November, and would be visited by our minister of defense. It's not yet decided but we'll encourage him to come," Bogustaw Zaleski, Poland's deputy minister of foreign affairs, told The Jakarta Post in a brief interview.
However, he declined to give more details, including the date.
Zaleski was leading a 12-member high-level delegation, including two other deputy ministers of economy and of finance, to Jakarta for a two-day bilateral consultation with Indonesian officials.
He said that the consultations, which ended on Tuesday, focused on preparations for the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the two countries, and on economic issues and investment.
The economic cooperation was yet to show more tangible results, he said. He reiterated that bilateral trade had been in Indonesia's favor for several years. Last year, Poland imported goods worth US$250 million from Indonesia, and its exports to Indonesia were valued at just $17.2 million.
"So, first our goal is just to balance this deficit. We are not looking for any kind of surplus, but for a balance and the development of bilateral relations," he said.
Poland -- a major defense hardware exporting country from Central Europe, and a new member of the world's powerful regional grouping, the European Union -- can help Indonesia with its defense industry.
Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said, during his visit to Indonesia in February, that an agreement on military- technical cooperation was expected to ensue, but he did not elaborate. He was quoted by Polish news agency PAP as saying that such an agreement might contribute to Poland's presence in the Indonesian market and strengthen both countries' relations.
Furthermore, Szmajdzinski said that Poland wanted to cooperate with Indonesia in certain fields, such as logistics and defense industries. The country offered a broad range of goods and services in these fields, such as airplanes, helicopters and advanced radar technologies and the modernization of post-soviet hardware used by the Indonesian Army.
"We would like to intensify the exchange of information and visits of military representatives, as well as to enlarge the scope of training," PAP quoted him as saying in Jakarta in February.