President to visit Australia to mend ties in May

JAKARTA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid will visit Australia next month to have talks with Prime Minister John Howard in an apparent move to mend the deteriorating relationship between the two countries.

"At the end of May, I shall go to Australia and I will talk to John Howard," Abdurrahman told the Asia Society in Hong Kong on Sunday, the last day of his recent overseas trip.

The ties between Jakarta and Canberra are at their lowest ebb since the East Timor saga in September last year. Australia played a major role in the UN-supervised self-determination ballot in the former Portuguese territory and led a multinational peacekeeping force deployed there.

Abdurrahman's plan comes on the heel of a spying incident involving an Australian member of the UN peacekeepers (PKF) in East Timor. The PKF commander, Lt. Gen. Jaime de los Santos, has apologized to the Indonesian Military (TNI) over the matter.

The President expressed his optimism that the relations between the two countries "will be improved".

"His (Howard) objections to us, among others, about making Indonesia the departure point for those illegal migrants to Australia from the Middle East is well taken and I've ordered the National Police chief to stop that.

"So both of us can work together to stamp out that thing if we can talk to each other, which is why talks are important for us," Abdurrahman added.

Gus Dur, as the President is also known, also said that he would make a brief stopover in the North Australian city of Darwin to meet with East Timor independence leader Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao.

"It has come to the point where I will use my transit point in Darwin to ask Xanana Gusmao to meet me there and to talk about the idea of developing human resources in East Timor," Abdurrahman said.

It was not clear, however, whether the stop in Darwin would be made on his way to Canberra or on his way home to Jakarta.

The two leaders last met in the East Timor capital of Dili on Feb. 29. (byg)