Indonesia to host Palestinian summit
Updated
More than 200 representatives from 53 countries are expected to meet in Jakarta on Monday at a conference intended to help build capacity in the Palestinian territory.
Our Jakarta correspondent, Geoff Thompson, reports Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, will formally open the conference at the State Palace .
The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyed, is expected to be among the five Palestinian ministers attending at the Ministerial Conference on Capacity Building for Palestine which is being held under a New Asian-African Strategic Partnership framework.
Described by Indonesia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah as a "foreign ministerial level conference aimed at increasing Palestine's capacity", the meeting is said to differ from a donor's conference held in Paris earlier this year because it "will focus on implementable projects".
Mr Faizasyah said the idea to hold the conference came up because 50 years after the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955, it had turned out that there was still a country which had not yet gained independence.
"Asian-African countries have experience in development. We hope our efforts will complement other international efforts to assist Palestine," he said.
