Rice in first visit to Indonesia
Condoleezza Rice is making her first visit as US Secretary of State to the world’s most populous Muslim nation today amid tight security.
Rice, who visited Indonesia as security adviser two years ago, is eager to show US support for the country’s fight against terrorism and its burgeoning democracy.
The south-east Asian country has gained strategic importance to the US since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which forced Washington to recognise the importance of allies among moderate Islamic nations.
The sprawling country of more than 220 million people is also increasingly viewed as a potential counterbalance to China’s surging economic, political and military power in the region.
Rice was scheduled to meet later today with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a US-educated former general, to discuss anti-terror co-operation, the widening bird flu outbreak and the Middle East peace process.
But her first stop was an Islamic school, which like many others in Indonesia is now funded by the US as part of its efforts to counter militant ideologies in the mostly moderate and secular country.
She was greeted by children, many of them girls wearing headscarves, waving Indonesian and US flags.
Inside, she toured classrooms and announced an $8.5m (€7.1m) programme to distribute “Sesame Street” educational materials in Indonesia, at one point joking around with a man in an Elmo costume.
Hundreds of police and several US Marines guarded the school in the centre of the capital Jakarta, and a water cannon stood by to ward off potential protesters.
The US and Indonesia have traditionally been close, but Washington cut military ties in 1999 after Indonesian troops ravaged East Timor during the territory’s break from Jakarta.
But last November the arms embargo was lifted and full ties restored, despite complaints by human rights groups that abuses by the military were continuing in far-flung regions of the sprawling archipelago.
Rice reiterated the importance of military relations on her way to Jakarta, and cited Indonesia’s co-operation in anti-terror investigations as well as democratic progress as the reasons for lifting the six-year ban.
Yudhoyono won the country’s first direct elections for head of state in 2004, vowing to defeat the terrorists, and has a history of working closely with the US on security issues.
“The military is an important institution in Indonesia,” Rice told reporters on her plane.
“It’s by no means completely made its reform, but we believe those reforms are under way and that we can have a more positive effect on the reforms by being part of it.”
Rice, who is staying in a US-owned hotel that was hit by a car bombing carried out by al-Qaida-linked militants three years ago, moved through the capital’s busy streets under tight security.
Some 1,500 security forces also guarded the US Embassy in downtown Jakarta, where Islamist hardliners were planning to protest at her visit later today.
Around 80% of Indonesia’s 220 million people are Muslim and most practise a moderate form of the faith.
But extremists are making inroads, in part because of anger over the US led-invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a perception that the US is unfairly targeting Muslims in its war on terror.
Five suicide bombings targeting Western interests have killed 240 people since 2000, many of them foreign tourists who were holidaying on the resort island of Bali.
