Indonesian president to meet Zelensky and Putin to urge peace talks

Yahoo – AFP, 26 June 2022 

Indonesian President and G20 chairman Joko Widodo set off on Sunday to Europe where he said he plans to visit Russia and Ukraine and meet with the countries' leaders to urge peace talks. 

Widodo departed for Germany to attend as a guest for the G7 summit from June 26 to 27, and he will then go to the Ukraine capital Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

"The mission is to ask... President Zelensky to open a dialogue forum for peace, to build peace because the war has to be stopped," he told a press conference in Jakarta. 

The two leaders will also discuss the food supply chain "that needs to be reactivated" soon, Widodo said. From Kyiv, Widodo is scheduled to visit Moscow and meet with Russia's Vladimir Putin. 

The visit to Moscow is planned for June 30, Indonesian authorities said earlier. 

"With the same mission, I will ask President Putin to open a dialogue and to immediately have a ceasefire and to stop the war," he said. Earlier in April Widodo announced he had called Zelensky and invited him to join world leaders at G20 Summit in Bali in November 2022 as a guest. 

Indonesia holds the rotating presidency of the G20 this year and has been pressured by Western countries, led by the United States, to exclude Russia from the meeting. 

Widodo, however, did not rescind the invitation to Russia and said that Putin has expressed his intention to attend the November summit. 

Indonesia, like most major emerging economies, has tried to maintain a neutral position and has called for a peaceful resolution to the months-long conflict. 

Widodo refused to send weapons to Ukraine in response to a request from Zelensky, instead offering humanitarian aid. 

After concluding the European visit, Widodo will head to the United Arab Emirates before returning to Indonesia.

Indonesian designer's wheels behind leaders' bamboo bike bromance

Yahoo – AFP, Marchio GORBIANO, June 24, 2022 

As Indonesian President Joko Widodo led Anthony Albanese around the lush gardens of a presidential palace south of Jakarta earlier this month, he presented the new Australian prime minister with an unusual gift: a bamboo bike. 

The night before, designer Singgih Susilo Kartono learned it would be the Spedagi model he crafts in a small village on the island of Java that the leaders would ride side-by-side in a unique moment of bicycle diplomacy. 

Prime Minister Albanese would tuck his trousers into his socks after the statesmen stripped off their jackets and ties and donned helmets, setting off on the light and environmentally friendly two-wheelers for the symbolic bike ride. 

The 54-year-old designer told AFP the diplomatic gesture was a "special, magical moment" for him after years spent working on the bike. 

"It's not about the bike being bought by Jokowi, but the fact that it was used to welcome PM (Albanese)," he said. 

When not arming world leaders with new bamboo wheels, Kartono is using his sustainable bike craftsmanship to bring jobs to locals and show Indonesian villagers how they can make use of the environment around them.

"I train youths here who lack skills. We have a system to train unskilled people until they can create quality products," he said. 

The model, named after the Indonesian words "sepeda" for bicycle and "pagi" for morning, is built by a team of 15 employees at a workshop in Kartono's village in Central Java, where he saddles up for his own bike ride every day. 

Fast-growing bamboo stalks are cut by his team, coated with preservatives, dried, then laminated before being combined with other parts to assemble the sturdy bike frame. 

Pound for pound, bamboo is as strong as steel when used in lightweight structures, studies have shown, with a high tensile strength that makes it a worthy and environmentally friendly substitute. 

A fully assembled Spedagi bamboo bike can take a week of intricate work, fetching up to 15 million rupiah ($1,000), and some have been sold as far away as Japan, company co-founder Tri Wahyuni told AFP. 

Friendship on wheels

The green wheels used by the two leaders were built with more expensive parts, said Kartono, declining to disclose the price of their rides. 

Widodo, famous at home for gifting bikes to ordinary Indonesians, is a Spedagi fan and bought one personally from Kartono in 2015. 

Albanese was similarly beaming about the bike, taking it back to Canberra and saying people would see him on the streets riding what might be "the only bamboo bike" in the Australian capital. 

Both bicycles and bamboo -- affordable and plentiful in Indonesia -- are closely linked with the archipelago nation's lower classes, something that struck a chord with the two leaders from humble backgrounds. 

But while the Kartono creation merged two symbols of Indonesian heritage, it is now tied to a blossoming bromance cultivated in the first weeks of Albanese's premiership. 

"Every time I ride on the bike, I will remember the friendship with President Widodo," he said. 

With his own creation now crossing the Pacific, Kartono said it was seeing bamboo bikes being made where the plant is rarely found -- such as in northern Europe -- that first motivated him to craft his design. 

"When I dug deep into bicycle products online, I found that bamboo bicycles are made in countries that do not have bamboo. That served as a slap for me," said the entrepreneur. 

"Bamboo is everywhere around my house."