Downing Street Says » Indonesia

Asked what the objectives were for the visit to Indonesia, the PMOS said that in terms of police co-operation, that would be one of the issues discussed tomorrow. There had already been close co-operation as could only be expected after the bombings in Bali and elsewhere in Indonesia. We were normalising relations in terms of defence. For obvious reasons he couldn’t go into the detail of those discussions. This visit was all about normalising relations with a democratic, muslim country which was looking very much towards mainstream Islamic thinking and working with other countries, including the UK, to take on and tackle the issue of Islamic extremism. That would be partially through political means, including creating a dialogue with Muslims in both countries, but also police and defence issues as well.

Asked if the Prime Minister had concerns about normalising relations with a country with well-documented human rights violations, the PMOS said that what we had to take account of were the huge strides that this country had made since October 2004 when the Mr Yudhoyono became the first directly elected President of Indonesia. We should also recognise the measures that had been taken, as Amnesty had acknowledged, in terms of reducing human rights abuses, tackling corruption and normalising judicial procedures. Of course, if people had concerns it was perfectly right that those concerns should be raised and dealt with. But the important thing was to recognise the huge strides that had been made.

Asked what we would be doing to encourage further strides by Indonesia in the direction of democratic reform, the PMOS said that he thought that was a mistaken analysis of what was happening in Indonesia. That analysis suggested that President Yudhoyono and the Indonesian government were in some way resistant to reducing human rights abuses and normalising their judicial process. That was not our analysis. We were working with a democratic government which had received 60% of the vote and was progressive in its attitude towards women and progressive in its attitude towards dialogue within Islam. The important thing was that by engaging with that government we not only encouraged them to continue down the progressive road but reaped the benefits from its insight into how we took on the fight against Islamic extremism, both ideologically and in terms of security. The important thing was that we had an open and honest dialogue, which we did, and equally recognised the intentions of the Indonesian government.

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» Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Indonesia

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