Wahid's visit to boost regional cooperation

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE, JAN. 28. As the Indonesian President, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, today left on a 17-day foreign tour that would cover Saudi Arabia as also Europe and a few Asian countries including India, the Foreign Minister, Mr. Alwi Shihab, indicated that Jakarta would like to fashion a political-strategic partnership with Beijing as well as New Delhi.

It should be made by Indonesia even while striving to intensify regional cooperation among the East Asian countries, he reportedly said in Jakarta, unveiling it as a foreign policy option before his country.

The President himself did not make any such proposal though he had suggested sometime ago that a five-power Asiatic ``entity'' - comprising Indonesia, India, China, Japan and Singapore - should be created. However, Mr. Wahid has not said much about this in public since then.

Nonetheless, according to informed sources, the accent on India and China could be seen as a counter to the bid by Australia to establish a new working relationship with Indonesia in the wake of the recent rift between the two over the East Timor issue.

Now, as seen from Jakarta, Canberra tends to regard itself as a Western power with an Asia-Pacific locus standi. Relevant to this context is the reported parallel move by Mr. Alwi of alerting the Indonesian Foreign Ministry to the ``increasing tendency'' of the Western States to ``impose their political agenda on developing countries.''

This was indicative of Indonesia's move to interact with the West while keeping in mind the latter's perceived agenda of ``political pressure and sanctions'' in relation to the Third World.

In some contrast, the Philippines today began a major joint military exercise with the United States. Manila's international compulsions being different from Indonesia's, though both belong to the Association of South-East Asian Nations, the exercise opened a new chapter in the region.

It is the first major bilateral event on the U.S.-Filipino front since the closure of American bases in Subic Bay in the early 1990s.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : Russia slams Clinton over Chechnya