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Malaysia offering help with haze, not blaming Indonesia: Envoy
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Kuala Lumpur's skyline is seen shrouded in haze on Sept. 10. Hundreds of schools across Southeast Asia are being shut as toxic smog from out-of-control forest fires blankets Malaysia and Indonesia, officials said.
(Agence France Presse/Mohd Rasfan)
M
alaysian Ambassador to Indonesia Zainal Abidin Bakar has denied that Malaysia was pointing the finger at Indonesia for causing transboundary haze, saying it was instead offering assistance to address the problem.
Zainal said Malaysia's Minister of Energy, Technology, Science, Climate Change and Environment Yeo Bee Yin had sent Indonesia a letter offering cooperation and not a protest note as had been previously reported by various media outlets.
Yeo and other Malaysian representatives had also met with Indonesian Embassy officials Agus Badrul Jamal and Agung Cahaya Sumirat over the matter on Tuesday.
“Actually, there was no protest letter from Malaysia but a letter sent to Indonesia’s environment and forestry minister from a Malaysian minister about the haze problem in Malaysia. It said Malaysia offered cooperation to help Indonesia if needed,” Zainal told reporters on Wednesday evening.
Last week, Malaysia reportedly said it would send a diplomatic note to Indonesia urging immediate action to fight the haze, prompting a rebuttal from Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya, who on Tuesday said she would also write a protest letter to the Malaysian ambassador suggesting that Malaysia also contributed to the problem.
Siti said the Indonesian government had continued to monitor the movement of the haze and insisted that data from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) showed that the haze had crossed the Indonesian border into Malaysia for only one hour on Sunday.
She further accused Malaysia of not being transparent about forest fires that occurred in its own territory, especially in Sarawak and the Malay Peninsula.
