Just days after Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa outlined the nation’s more activist foreign policy approach for 2013, Indonesia came out with a bold statement, urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down to end the ongoing bloody civil war in the Arab country.

 While Indonesia is not the first country to make such a call, this is the first time in as long as we can remember that the government has come out in so forceful a manner to tell a head of state to quit.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the statement during a meeting with seven visiting sheiks on Monday. The President’s spokesman, Julian Aldrin Pasha, said: “In the meeting, President Yudhoyono said it would be better if President Assad stepped down to end the bloodshed in the hopes that there will be a political transition toward leadership that can be accepted by all parties.”