Washington to give $25m in emergency aid to Jakarta

Washington to give $25m in emergency aid to Jakarta

WASHINGTON (AFP): The United States will provide US$25 million in emergency food aid to Indonesia to alleviate shortages caused by drought, an administration official said Wednesday.

The type and quantity of aid remains undecided, said the official, who asked not to be named.

But an announcement from the White House is expected soon, and the price tag is "in the ballpark of 25 million dollars," the official said.

While officials said the aid aimed to make up shortages caused by drought, it would also further two strategic aims: quelling unrest that could threaten Asia's economic recovery, and making a positive gesture to a huge country from which Washington has grown increasingly estranged.

The aid comes under the same law, Title II of Public Law 480, which has allowed Washington to send $146 million in emergency aid to North Korea since 1995.

Testifying before a Senate panel, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services August Schumacher said food aid for the Southeast Asian country was "under active consideration."

The White House is unlikely to delay announcing the aid either because of Jakarta's foot-dragging response to IMF-mandated economic reforms or a political fracas here over U.S. military aid to Indonesia, said another official who asked not to be named.

"There's been a lot of discussion and an enormous desire to be responsive" to Indonesia's need, the official said. "This would be given on a humanitarian basis," he said, adding that authorities here had received conflicting information about Indonesia's need for food aid.

But recent reports suggest that food supplies have suffered as a result of forest fires and drought, with the price of existing supplies driven up as a result of the country's economic crisis.

That could make the world's fourth-largest country, whose relations with Washington have grown strained in recent years, a tinderbox for social and political unrest, analysts say.

And any widespread upheaval could spell trouble for East Asia's tentative economic recovery, following months of tumbling currencies and fleeing investment.

"It appears to make good sense to do this," said Rick Fisher, an Asia scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank.

"The potential for instability is a very serious concern, and the region as a whole cannot afford to be dealing with an Indonesia wracked by violent convulsions," he said. "If it's aid for people and delivery to the people is verified, that can be a positive gesture."

Drought has recently prompted a renewed outbreak of forest fires, notably in East Kalimantan, in Indonesia's section of Borneo.