Howard downplays Jakarta treaty
SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard has downplayed an early revival of a defense pact with Indonesia, preferring instead to focus on what he calls the "huge achievement" of a peaceful presidential election in Australia's northern neighbor.
Howard is traveling to Jakarta Tuesday to attend Wednesday's inauguration of new president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who convincingly beat incumbent Megawati Sukarnoputri in elections last month.
Howard himself won a fourth term as Australian leader with an emphatic poll victory on October 9.
Asked about possible discussions with Yudhoyono on a new bilateral defense and security treaty -- first raised by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer last Sunday -- Howard said it would not come up.
"I'll be seeing the President-elect tonight (Tuesday) when I get there, but we'll be talking very generally," Howard told reporters in Canberra just before his departure for Jakarta.
He said the most important thing he wanted to convey to Yudhoyono was how much Australia admired the transition to democracy in Indonesia.
"You've had this huge popular election in the largest Islamic country in the world. It's been carried out with a very pleasing lack of bloodshed and violence and I think ... it's a huge salute to the Indonesian people and to the political system in Indonesia," he said.
A bilateral security agreement the two neighbors signed in 1995 lapsed in 1999 when relations cooled after Australia sent peacekeepers into what became the independent state of East Timor.
At the time of the 1995 treaty, military strongman Suharto was in power in Indonesia and Paul Keating was the Australian prime minister.
Keating's Labor administration was defeated by Howard's conservative Liberal-National coalition in 1996 and Suharto was forced to step down in 1998.
Yudhoyono said last year he thought the two countries should revive the old agreement.
Downer told the Nine television network Sunday that the Howard government would not seek to revive the former treaty because it was a "fairly meaningless document".
Howard, who will also meet Yudhoyono at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Chile next month, praised the president-elect's "very strong commitment" to the fight against terrorism.
"I know we'll have a good relationship between Australia and Indonesia under his leadership," he said.
Relations between Howard and Megawati were seen as not particularly close.
Australia and Indonesia already cooperate on anti-terrorism matters, particularly in the wake of the October 2002 Bali bombings in which 202 people died, 88 of them Australians.
Australian Federal Police are also working closely with their Indonesian counterparts in investigating the September 9 blast outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed nine people.
The two countries already have signed a memorandum of understanding on fighting terrorism.
Downer told the Nine network this memorandum should be incorporated into any new agreement. But he said it was unlikely Howard and Yudhoyono would discuss a security agreement in any detail this week.
"We'd be looking at later this year and early next year, working up those issues in a bit more detail with the Indonesians," he said, the Australian Associated Press reported.
Downer said Yudhoyono was committed to taking a strong stand against Jemaah Islamiya, the terrorist group that is regarded as the Southeast Asian arm of the al Qaeda network.
Jemaah Islamiya has been implicated in the Bali bombings, the August 2003 attack on the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, in which 14 people died, and the most recent blast outside the Australian embassy last month.
Last Friday, Indonesian prosecutors formally charged militant cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir with ordering his followers to launch the suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel.
His trial will begin on October 28, Indonesian court officials said Monday.
Ba'asyir, 68, is widely seen as the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiya, though he denies it. He was in jail at the time of the Marriott attack.
