Susilo could yield thaw in ties for Australian poll winner

Susilo could yield thaw in ties for Australian poll winner

Chris McCall, Agence France-Presse/Sydney, Australia

Australia's oft-troubled relations with Indonesia will pose an
early foreign policy challenge for whatever government emerges
from Saturday's election, which coincides with a change of
regimes in Jakarta.

Analysts say the Sept. 20 election of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
as Indonesia's president could lead to a warming in ties between
Australia and its giant neighbor to the north.

Susilo, a retired general popularly known as SBY, is a man
familiar with the West.

He once studied in the United States, has been to Australia
several times and has his own contacts among the Canberra elite.

Susilo, who is expected to be sworn in as president later this
month, has already promised an investment-friendly climate that
should help Australian mining firms and other business which have
struggled to keep Indonesian operations solvent in the face of
rampant corruption.

He is also sympathetic to Australian concerns about security
and is expected to deal firmly with religious extremists -- a key
for Australia following last month's suicide bombing in front of
its embassy in Jakarta by suspected members of the al-Qaeda
linked group Jamaah Islamiyah.

The issue will come to the forefront immediately after
Saturday's election when Australians and Indonesians mark the
second anniversary of the Oct. 12, 2002, Jamaah Islamiyah bombing
on the resort island of Bali which killed 202 people, 88 of them
Australians.

As former chief security minister under outgoing President
Megawati Soekarnoputri, Susilo was the point man for Australia to
deal with after the Bali bombings.

"On the Indonesian side there is no doubt we could not have
asked for a better outcome in terms of an Indonesian leader who
is well disposed to Australia," Alan Dupont, a political analyst
with the Lowy Institute, told AFP.

Prime Minister John Howard said on Thursday that meeting the
new Indonesian leader would be a foreign policy priority if he is
reelected.

"I want to have an early meeting with the newly elected
president," Howard said, calling Susilo "a very even man" and
"somebody who will be very important to Australia in the years
ahead".

The leader of the opposition Labor Party, Mark Latham, has for
his part vowed to refocus foreign policy on Australia's regional
neighbors if elected, a stance likely to be welcomed in Jakarta.

But Dupont cautioned that any warming in bilateral relations
between the two nations would be a gradual process, whoever is
Australia's leader.

Like other Indonesian presidents, Susilo will be constrained
by the political realities of Muslim-dominated Indonesia, where
the motives of predominantly white, Christian Australia are
regarded with suspicion, he said.

Susilo will not want to be seen at home as the West's stooge.

"The political reality in Indonesia is that you cannot move
quickly. It has got to be a very softly, softly approach," he
said.

"There are some unrealistic expectations about what Susilo
will do on that front."

If Howard is reelected on Saturday as recent opinion polls
suggest, it could take longer to see a warming in ties, Dupont
suggested, noting that the conservative leader had frequently
alienated Indonesians during his eight years in office.

He infuriated many in Jakarta by leading the international
intervention in East Timor in 1999 as the province sought
independence from Jakarta.

His hard-line crackdown on asylum seekers before the previous
election in 2001 then drew widespread criticism as did a wave of
raids on Indonesian Muslim homes in Australia that followed the
Bali bombing.

At the height of sour relations after Megawati became
president in 2001, she refused to even take phone calls from
Howard.

"They do not like Howard. That is a reality," Dupont said.