Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, accompanied by her Indonesian counterpart, Hassan Wirajuda, in Jakarta on Wednesday.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Reaching out to the world’s most populous Muslim nation and the boyhood home of her boss, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Indonesia on Wednesday, saying she wanted to pay tribute to its hard-won democracy.
“Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the last 10 years,” she said, hearkening to the Asian financial crisis of 1998, which triggered the ouster of the autocratic regime of President Suharto.
Mrs. Clinton said that her decision to come here — a 3,600-mile detour from her tour of Japan, South Korea, and China — was also driven by a desire to recognize Southeast Asia, a region that senior Obama administration officials said had been neglected by the Bush White House.
To underscore that point, she announced that the United States would move toward signing a treaty with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which would draw it closer to the 10-member group, which includes Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
But Mrs. Clinton sharply criticized another ASEAN member, Myanmar, and said that the United States was reviewing its policy of economic sanctions against the military junta that runs the country, formerly known as Burma.
“Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta,” Mrs. Clinton said after a meeting with Indonesia’s foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda. She added, “Reaching out and trying to engage them hasn’t worked either.”
Mrs. Clinton said the United States sought a broader partnership with Indonesia, particularly in the area of climate change. Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, largely because of its extensive deforestation. She also praised the Indonesian government for its fight against Islamic extremism.
In his first annual threat assessment, submitted to the United States Senate last week, the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, said Indonesia’s counterterrorism efforts, which were aided by the United States, had resulted in the arrests of hundreds of operatives of Jemaah Islamiya, the radical Islamist group responsible for the deadly Bali bombings in 2002.
While he said the group remained a threat, the Indonesian government’s efforts had “degraded their attack capabilities.”
Indonesia is, in many ways, a good-news story: an Islamic society that has made a transition to democracy and rebuilt its economy after a devastating collapse during the Asian financial crisis.
At the airport in Jakarta, Mrs. Clinton was serenaded by children from the grade school Mr. Obama attended as a fourth grader. She seemed delighted and swayed in unison with the children.
“President Obama has a very strong constituency in Indonesia – of course without the right to vote,” said Mr. Wirajuda, the foreign minister.
He urged Clinton to convey an invitation to Mr. Obama to visit Indonesia soon.
“We cannot wait too long,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton has asked experts whether Indonesia holds any lessons for Pakistan, a similarly large, but much less stable Muslim country. The answer is not clear, given the distinct differences in Pakistani and Javanese culture, and the different role religion plays in the two societies.
Indonesia has felt reverberations from the economic crisis that originated in the United States, and its recent history makes it feel vulnerable to the ravages of a cross-border economic contagion.
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Warm welcome
Warm welcome: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (right) greets US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, shortly after her arrival at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Thursday. During her first overseas visit as America’s top diplomat, Clinton is expected to revitalize US economic and development ties with Indonesia and Southeast Asia. JP/R. Berto Wedhatama
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