Religious intellectual groups urged to pool their resources

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto is urging religion-based intellectual organizations, whose existence has been criticized as fostering sectarian politics in Indonesia, to pool their resources to help with national development.

President Soeharto met with leaders of five religion-based organizations at his residence on Saturday. He appealed to them to work together at improving the quality of human resources, which is seen as a key to success in development.

The president fell short of appealing to the organizations to merge into one group as some politicians and government leaders have suggested.

The five groups represented were ICMI (Moslems), ISKI (Roman Catholics), PIKI (Protestants), FCHI (Hindus). Buddhists were represented by members of the Buddhist Council who took the opportunity to announce the formation of their own intellectual organization, to be called KCBI, today.

ICMI's chairman B.J. Habibie, who is also the state minister of research and technology, led the group.

"Human resources development should be coordinated in order to turn people into potentials in the fields of research and technology which will benefit all of the people in a shortest time possible," Habibie quoted the President as saying.

Habibie said the five organizations could work closely without merging into a single organization. "I think the cooperation between the five will be more effective in an informal way."

Responding to Soeharto's appeal, the five organizations plan to jointly organize a seminar on human resources development, Habibie said. The seminar is scheduled for Aug. 14 and Aug. 15.

PIKI chairman Pieter P. Sumbung said the cooperation was not a response to criticism that the groups were fostering sectarian politics.

The allegation, aimed chiefly at ICMI because of its increasing influence and reach, has been widely denied.

"The idea of cooperating comes from the president himself, from a statement he made when he opened the PIKI congress last December," Sumbung said.

He added that since then PIKI and ICMI took the initiative to jointly organize the seminar on human resources development.

Others taking part in the meeting on Saturday were ISKI chairman Joko Waluyo, FCHI chairman Putu Setia and Siti Hartati Murdaya, a candidate to head the KCBI.

All the representatives during the meeting with President Soeharto pledged their commitment to promote the unity of the nation, and the cooperation between the five organizations was a reflection of this commitment. (05)