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RI lobbies South Pacific countries for UNSC membership

Indonesia will use Nauru’s Independence Day celebration to convince South Pacific countries to support its campaign to be a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)

Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, January 30, 2018

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RI lobbies South Pacific countries for UNSC membership

I

ndonesia will use Nauru’s Independence Day celebration to convince South Pacific countries to support its campaign to be a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Indonesia wants to be a member of the council in the 2019 to 2020 period.

Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto left Jakarta for Nauru on Monday evening to attend Nauru’s 50th anniversary of Independence Day on Wednesday.

Wiranto will also separately meet other leaders attending the ceremony, such as those of Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and Tonga.

“Indonesia’s government always takes every opportunity to enhance support for Indonesia’s candidacy to be a non-permanent UNSC member,” the Foreign Ministry’s director general for Asia-Pacific and African affairs, Desra Percaya, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Indonesia is seeking its fourth tenure on the UNSC, last having had a seat on it in 2008.

The election will be held in June by secret ballots and without nominations.

During the visit, Wiranto is to discuss several other issues that have “become common concerns,” Desra said.

They include climate change, illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and the possibility of enhancing cooperation on capacity building, as well as economics and trade.

Indonesia will also touch on the topic of the protection of Indonesia’s territorial integrity, he added.

Several countries in the South Pacific that are grouped in the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) have criticized Indonesia for gross human rights violations in the Papua and West Papua provinces.

At the 2017 UN General Assembly in New York, for example, the prime ministers of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu called on the UN’s Human Rights Council to formally investigate long-standing allegations of human rights abuses in the two provinces.

Wiranto’s visit to Nauru was a reply to a request from Nauruan President Baron Divavesi Waqa, who attended the 10th Bali Democracy Forum in South Tangerang, Bangen, in December.

Waqa extended the invitation when he met President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo at the Bogor Presidential Palace.

Wiranto is representing Indonesia because Jokowi is still on a South Asian tour, said Desra.

“Aside from enhancing friendly relations with Pacific countries and bolstering issues that concern us, this visit is also a part of Indonesia’s diplomacy to show our presence in the Pacific,” he said.

The measures, he said, were taken to not only show respect and understanding toward other countries, but also to “result a concrete agreement that is essential for both countries.”

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