Indonesia’s priority programs to accelerate development in its eastern region will also have a positive impact on development in the South Pacific region, a top diplomat says.

The Foreign Ministry’s Asia-Pacific and African affairs director general, Desra Percaya, said Indonesia was not only part of Asia but also “an inseparable part of the Pacific region”.

“We have to remember that we are not only a part of Asia. We share oceans with the Pacific,” he said in a press statement on Monday.

Desra leads the Indonesian delegation at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Summit, which opened on Monday in Nauru and runs until Thursday.

Taking the theme “Building a Strong Pacific: Our People, Our Islands, Our Will”, the 49th PIF Summit discusses various issues in the Pacific, like regional security, climate change and maritime safety.

The event also marks the handover of the PIF chair from Samoa to Nauru, which holds the position until 2019.

Desra emphasized that Indonesia — the world’s largest archipelagic country located between two oceans — would continue to strengthen cooperation with Pacific countries to support “establishment of a safe, open, advanced and prosperous Pacific region”.

Among other attempts, Indonesia’s priority programs to accelerate development of eastern Indonesia would likely bring a positive impact to the South Pacific region.

The Indonesian government is attempting to minimize development gaps between western and eastern parts of Indonesia by accelerating a number of priority infrastructure projects in eastern Indonesia.

The projects include roads and bridges, dams, flood control, housing, sanitation, drinking water and slum area management.

The infrastructure projects, particularly roads and bridges, aim to open isolated areas and also to reduce the cost of logistics transportation.

Desra, however, did not elaborate on how accelerated development in eastern Indonesia would also benefit Pacific countries.

Meanwhile, Nauru President Baron Divavesi Waqa said in the opening ceremony that PIF should be a place for Pacific countries to solve various common challenges faced in the region.

Since 2001, Indonesia has regularly attended PIF meetings with dialogue partners, together with the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and the European Union.

PIF, established in 1971, itself is a working forum of 18 countries and territories in the Pacific, including Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia, Tuvalu, Tonga and Vanuatu.

AFP reported on Saturday that the official talks would center on the threat climate change poses to the island states and China’s rising influence in the region.

However, the host nation was keen to deflect attention from its Canberra-funded migration detention camp dubbed “Australia’s Guantanamo” by critics.

The detention center loomed large as the four-day meeting started, amid calls from rights groups such as Amnesty International to close the facility it calls “a stain on the region”.

“Pacific island leaders cannot ignore this issue any longer and need to ensure that it is at the very top of the forum’s agenda,” Amnesty said after releasing an open letter cosigned by 80 other non-governmental organizations.

The camp houses around 220 asylum seekers, including more than a dozen children, who have tried to reach Australia by boat.

Under Canberra’s hard-line immigration policies, such people are processed in remote facilities on Nauru and Papua New Guinea to prevent them from setting foot on the Australian mainland.

The camp is an economic lifeline for Nauru, which has a population of 11,000 and scant natural resources.

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