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Blair seeks closer Indonesian tiesUK leader wants global alliance to defend values
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to normalize defense ties with Indonesia during his visit to the world's most populous Muslim nation. Blair's 24-hour visit will also see him and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono discuss plans to help combat Islamic extremism, according to Reuters. "What this visit is all about is normalizing our relations with a democratic Muslim country that is very much looking to promote mainstream Islamic thinking and work with others, including ourselves, to take on and tackle the issue of Islamic extremism," Reuters reported Blair's official spokesman as saying on Thursday. The step is expected to see future joint military exercises, but would not immediately lead to arms deals between the two countries, Reuters said. Pacific visitBlair's visit to Indonesia is the last leg of a week-long tour that has also taken him to Australia and New Zealand. While in Australia, Blair called for a global alliance to defend universal values of justice, fairness and freedom from fear. The immediate threat to these values is posed by Islamist extremism, he said. "If we want to secure our way of life, there is no alternative but to fight for it," he told a joint sitting of the Australian parliament in Canberra on Monday. Both Britain and Australia have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and are close allies of the United States. The British leader said now was not the time to walk away from Iraq, where a "titanic struggle" was being played out there and in Afghanistan. Blair said in both cases people in those countries had seized the chance to vote when it was offered to them. But in the struggle to defend global values, Blair said there was no prosperity without security, and no security without justice. He said a global alliance should be pushing to defend universal values wherever they were under threat. Blair also attacked anti-U.S. sentiment in Europe as "madness" when set against the long-term challenges facing the world. He said the world needed the United States to be involved, and not "to pull up the drawbridge" in favor of isolationism. "I don't always agree with the United States. Sometimes they can be difficult friends to have," he told the Australian parliamentarians. But not to have the United States fully engaged in the battle for global values was the wrong course. In a wide-ranging address, Blair focused on the war on terror, but also raised issues that included finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; combating famine and poverty; climate change and energy security; the fight against protectionism in the current global round of trade negotiations; and the impact of immigration. He said that once the Israel election was over, "we must redouble our efforts" to resolve the situation in the Middle East, built on the basis of a secure state of Israel and a viable and functioning state for the Palestinians. 
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