The US and Indonesia sealed a “comprehensive partnership” agreement Tuesday to boost ties across economic and other fields, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said during a joint media conference with US President Barack Obama.
“We agreed to improve cooperation in a number of sectors, with the main agenda being trade and investment, education, energy, climate and the environment, security and democratization,” he said in Jakarta.
The two leaders also pledged closer cooperation in the fight against terror. “We underlined cooperation on counter-terrorism as terrorism is the enemy of any nation,” Yudhoyono said.
During the joint media conference, the US president also spoke about Israeli plans to build new settler homes in occupied east Jerusalem. He said the plans were not “helpful” to Middle East peace negotiations.
He said: “This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations. I’m concerned that we’re not seeing each side make the extra effort to get a breakthrough that could finally create a framework for a secure Israel living side-by-side in peace with a sovereign Palestine.”
Obama also spoke about his time spent as a child in Indonesia, where he lived between the ages of six and 10.
He said the landscape of his former home city of Jakarta had changed and that returning to Indonesia as the president of the US was “disorienting.”
“It’s wonderful to be here, although I have to tell you, when you visit a place that you’ve spent time [in] as a child, as [the] president, it’s a little disorienting,” Obama said.
Obama arrived in Jakarta at 4:20pm local time aboard Air Force One on Tuesday as he continued his nine-day Asian tour ahead of this week’s G-2- summit in Seoul.
He immediately went to meet Yudhoyono at the state palace in Jakarta.
Obama may be forced to leave the nation earlier than scheduled due to ash clouds caused by multiple recent eruptions of the island chain’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi.
Even as he spoke a 5.1 magnitude earthquake hit a remote island region some 600 miles northwest of Jakarta, underlining the volatile geological nature of the region.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the President’s scheduled departure time from Indonesia on Wednesday would likely be brought forward because of the ash clouds.
“Getting to Korea a touch earlier is almost certainly going to happen,” he said, adding that Obama still hoped to deliver a speech at an Indonesian university Wednesday.
“My sense is, our hope is, that while we may have to truncate some of the morning [Wednesday], we can get the speech in,” Gibbs said.