Rudd begins his first formal visit to Indonesia
Updated
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now in Indonesia where climate change and logging will be high on his agenda.
Presenter: Geoff Thompson
Speakers:Teuku Faizasyah, Foreign Ministry Spokesman; Dr. Ikrar Nusa Bhakt, Indonesia Institute Of Sciences Centre For Political Sciences; Juwowno Sudarsono, Defence Minister
GEOFF THOMPSON: The roar of Kevin Rudd's Air Force jet drowned out the niceties exchanged between he and Indonesia's Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda last night, but there's no doubting Australia's Prime Minister is being warmly received here.
Already looming large in front of a fountain across from Indonesia's Presidential Palace are the hand-painted and toothily smiling grins of Mr Rudd and his wife, alongside the more stoic portraits of Indonesia's first couple.
The ice in this leadership relationship was already well melted in Bali with the new Prime Minister's fresh from victory visit last December. The message from the Palace now is that President Yudhoyono wants to build on the foundations of this professional and personal relationship.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah.
TEUKU FAIZASYAH: We trust there will be plenty of issues that we will be able to explore further in terms of enhancing the strategic partnership already pursued by our two countries.
GEOFF THOMPSON: After a wreath laying visit to Indonesia's Heroes Cemetery in the early morning, Mr Rudd will head to the Palace where he is likely to spend more time expanding on security cooperation and forest-saving climate change initiatives than his big idea for new a regional architecture in the Asia-Pacific, says Dr Ikrar Nusa Bhakti of the Indonesia Institute of Sciences Centre for Political Sciences.
IKRAR NUSA BHAKTI: Indonesia, I think, will be very careful there, not because Australia will be taking the lead in the Asia-Pacific block, but because you know that in the security architecture in the Asia-Pacific, I think ASEAN has already been taking the lead - as the leader in the Asia-Pacific region.
GEOFF THOMPSON: Trade talks and progressing an inter-faith dialogue are also on the agenda at a time when Indonesia's Muslims are infighting over how to deal with a so called deviant sect, the activities which the government has decreed to restrict.
But the 2006 Lombok Treaty signed in the wake of the Papuan asylum seekers crisis has laid down the framework of a new era of security co-operation which Indonesia's Defence Minister Juwono Sudarsono says is better than ever.
JUWONO SUDARSONO: We now have very good relationship at all levels. At the level of the foreign ministry particularly but also the police, border protection, the defence force, immigration and not least the concern over migration, illegal migration passing through Indonesia into Australia.
GEOFF THOMPSON: Australia's continuing warnings against travel in Indonesia because of the threat of terror attacks remain a point of dispute, but not enough to displace the considerable goodwill which will be most on display when Mr Rudd witnesses Australia's successful aid programs in Aceh tomorrow.
