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RI considers restarting Oz border talks
The upcoming visit of a high-level Indonesian delegation to Australia may set the tone for the two neighbors’ ties for the next few years, as Jakarta weighs its option to either conclude a much-awaited trade deal or demand clarity over unresolved border negotiations with Canberra
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The upcoming visit of a high-level Indonesian delegation to Australia may set the tone for the two neighbors’ ties for the next few years, as Jakarta weighs its option to either conclude a much-awaited trade deal or demand clarity over unresolved border negotiations with Canberra.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his high-level entourage is scheduled to fly to Sydney this Friday for bilateral talks with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, followed by the President’s attendance at a special ASEAN-Australia summit over the weekend.
Among the delegation will be Damos Agusman, the Foreign Ministry’s director general for legal affairs and treaties, who plans to have a meeting with his erstwhile Australian counterpart, Gary Quinlan, on the possibility of restarting unresolved border negotiations with Canberra.
Quinlan, chief negotiator for the recently concluded maritime boundary dispute with Timor Leste, was reassigned by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as ambassador to Indonesia late last month, a move which has raised questions about Canberra’s intentions going forward.
Damos did not specify how he would approach the meeting, saying only that they were “preliminary talks” that would do “no harm”.
Even so, experts believe this meeting may set the stage for future Indonesian-Australian negotiations on the establishment of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and certain seabed boundaries, pursuant to the Perth Treaty tabled in August 1997 that has not yet come into force.
I Made Andi Arsana, a geodetic engineering expert from Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University, said a renegotiation of the Perth Treaty between the two partners was inevitable.
Andi argued that there was a clear opportunity to renegotiate the treaty, especially in relation to the recent Australia-Timor Leste maritime border treaty.
“The 1997 treaty assumed that Timor Leste was still a part of Indonesia, so there are coordinates and lines set up by Indonesia and Australia [that have] now become part of Timor Leste and Australia’s border,” he told the The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
“That would mean some of the points and lines we had agreed on became invalid and irrelevant.”
Andi, however, cautioned that a possible renegotiation may be too sensitive for both sides to determine in the short term. “[It might not be declared during the high-level meetings], but I’m sure the Foreign Ministry will start looking for an opportunity at the counterpart level,” he said.
Last week, Dili and Canberra signed a treaty at the United Nations in New York to end a decade-old dispute over an unresolved maritime border, the first-ever reached under a special conciliation mechanism of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Indonesia has followed the conciliation process very closely, and has looked into the treaty’s paperwork that was made public just a few days ago.
Meanwhile, President Jokowi would expect the visit to have a positive impact on the ongoing negotiations for the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).
Indonesia is hoping the CEPA negotiation will be completed this year, with several issues, mainly in the agricultural sector, reportedly becoming points of heated debate.
“Hopefully the meeting will produce significant results. If not, we’re hoping the bilateral talks to push the CEPA negotiations to be completed this year,” said Edi Yusup, the Foreign Ministry’s director for East Asia and Pacific affairs, last week.
Meanwhile, international security expert Evan Laksmana of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said from a political perspective, the decision to renegotiate should not outweigh the earlier priority of concluding the CEPA.
“In terms of foreign policy priority with Australia, I think finalizing CEPA is more urgent to be resolved,” Evan told the Post on Sunday.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said a renegotiation of borders with Indonesia was not an issue, as Australia was “committed to [...] existing treaties with Indonesia that delimit our maritime borders.”
