RI and New Zealand must pursue people-to-people links, Clark says
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.