Zoellick to meet with Megawati on Aug. 10
Zoellick to meet with Megawati on Aug. 10
CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP): U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick will head to Indonesia August 10-11 for meetings with new President Megawati Soekarnoputri, the White House said Tuesday.
"Ambassador Zoellick will meet with President Megawati to express the United States' strong support for a stable, united, democratic, and prosperous Indonesia," Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement.
A U.S. official who declined to be identified told AFP that Zoellick would stop in Indonesia as part of a regional trip set to also take him to India to discuss a new round World Trade Organization talks.
During a July 23 press conference in Rome, Bush had praised Megawati and said he looked forward to working with her "to address Indonesia's challenges of economic reform, peaceful resolution of separatist challenges and maintaining territorial integrity."
"We hope all parties will work together to maintain peace, support the constitution, and promote national reconciliation," said Bush.
Megawati was sworn in July 23 as Indonesia's new president after parliament voted unanimously to dismiss her predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, the first democratically-elected leader of the world's fourth most populous country.
During a later visit to Australia, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States wants to improve bilateral ties with Indonesia but not at the expense of improvements in Jakarta's human rights performance.
Powell told commercial television in Canberra the U.S. Congress would reassess Washington's restrictions on U.S. military assistance to Jakarta if it could be satisfied human rights abuses by the Indonesian military had been curbed.
The United States and Australia severed the bulk of their military ties with Jakarta after Indonesian troops were implicated in bloody attempts to crush the independence movement in East Timor in 1999.
Australia led a UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force into the territory in September that year, heavily backed by U.S. military logistical support.
"We want to have a relationship with the Indonesian military, but we also want to be satisfied that those human rights abuses are behind us," Powell said.
"We want to be sure that the Indonesian military will be operating in a very, very positive and democratic way.
"Our Congress has in place certain restrictions on what we can do with the Indonesians, so we will approach the new Indonesian government with an attitude of helpfulness but with also an attitude of caution."
Powell said if the new administration of Megawati was able to rein in continued human rights abuses in restive Indonesian provinces such as Aceh and Irian Jaya "we'll go back to our Congress to get those laws modified or waived if that seems to be appropriate".