RI and New Zealand must pursue people-to-people links, Clark says
Claire Harvey, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Educational and trade links were the best way to rebuild the fragile relationship between New Zealand and Indonesia, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said here on Tuesday.
The New Zealand government is demanding more evidence of human rights reform before it will reestablish military ties with Jakarta, but Clark said exchanges of people and expertise were just as important.
"We need to turn our minds to how to build up the people-to- people links," the Prime Minister said at a reception at the New Zealand Ambassador's residence. "Relations grow when far more than governments get on - it's when people know each other."
On Monday she told a lunch hosted by the Jakarta Editors' Club that New Zealand would not restore military ties without more evidence that past human rights abuses were being punished.
"We want to see some further movement yet on the tribunals before which the human rights violators from East Timor are to be brought and we still have some concerns about the role of the military with respect to Aceh and Papua," she said, while referring to the troubled provinces of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam in the westernmost tip of Indonesia and Papua on the opposite tip of the country.
Last year more than 600 fee-paying Indonesian students were educated at New Zealand universities, and Clark said on Tuesday the country wanted many more students from Indonesia to come.
In her two-day visit to Jakarta, she discussed trade and economic relations with President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Vice President Hamzah Haz.
On Tuesday Clark laid a wreath at the Kalibata National Heroes Cemetery in East Jakarta and paid courtesy calls on People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) speaker Amien Rais and House of Representatives (DPR) speaker Akbar Tandjung.
Clark also witnessed the signing of an agreement between New Zealand and the United Nations for an aid project involving the donation of educational materials to primary schools in Indonesia's eastern provinces.
Clark said the New Zealand aid contribution to Indonesia, scheduled to be NZ$40 million (US$18 million) over the next five years, would continue to be concentrated in eastern parts of Indonesia.
"I know Indonesia over the past four or five years has coped with immense political change and enormous economic crisis as well, but I detect in Jakarta an enormous hope for the future," she said before leaving Jakarta for Wellington on Tuesday evening.