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Jokowi to debut Indo-Pacific concept

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo plans to debut Indonesia’s own perspective on the Indo-Pacific debate at the East Asia Summit (EAS) next week, as the government pushes for ASEAN to adopt a local perspective on the increasingly popular geopolitical construct

Dian Septiari and Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, November 9, 2018

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Jokowi to debut Indo-Pacific concept

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span>President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo plans to debut Indonesia’s own perspective on the Indo-Pacific debate at the East Asia Summit (EAS) next week, as the government pushes for ASEAN to adopt a local perspective on the increasingly popular geopolitical construct.

The East Asia Summit is part of a flurry of meetings under the banner of the 2018 ASEAN Summit to be held in Singapore beginning Tuesday, where President Jokowi will attend 17 diplomatic meetings in the space of three days.

“This comes after at least one and a half years of intensively consulting with ASEAN states and ASEAN dialogue partners [about the concept],” Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi told reporters at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Thursday.

Retno said Jokowi had previously talked about Indonesia’s maritime vision when he attended the same meeting in 2014, during which the Indo-Pacific strategy was briefly mentioned.

However, she said the EAS meeting next Thursday would not be the end result of a synthesis of ideas but rather the beginning of the development of a coherent regional concept.

Indonesia believes the EAS forum is the right place to discuss the Indo-Pacific strategy, a developing concept that has already been taken up by a number of ASEAN dialogue partners, such as India with its Act East Policy, South Korea with its New Southern Policy and Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, a version of which was later coopted by the United States.

Indonesia has been pushing for an ASEAN-led regional architecture at the EAS, a forum of 18 partner countries from the wider Indo-Pacific region.

During the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in August, Indonesia circulated a detailed document on the Indonesian perspective, which derived from the basic ideas Indonesia had introduced — “an open, transparent and inclusive Indo-Pacific regional architecture based on international law”.

Following the push from Indonesia, ASEAN member states met and agreed that ASEAN needed to develop a collective outlook on the Indo-Pacific concept.

Separately, the Foreign Ministry’s ASEAN external cooperations director, Benny YP Siahaan, said the collective document was “99 percent ready”, pending approval from the remaining ASEAN countries.

“It is only a matter of time, because it takes time for ASEAN countries to process it, and we cannot manage to have ASEAN adopting the document as its official position for the upcoming EAS meeting,” he said.

He gave an assurance that ASEAN would have its own position by this year, just not at the EAS meeting.

Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said the Indo-Pacific strategy was one of Indonesia’s priorities for ASEAN, and said it would be the first time such a concept would be discussed at the leadership level of EAS.

In addition to attending ASEAN-related meetings, Jokowi is expected to hold bilateral meetings with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.

“However, the plans can still be changed during the event,” Arrmanatha said.

After Singapore, Jokowi will leave for Port Moresby to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit on Nov. 17 to 18, where in addition to attending the official meetings, he will also meet leaders of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

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