Tim Dodd, Jakarta – In a stunning reversal, Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid has praised the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, for his "strength" in sticking to his controversial views on Asia and offered to build a new relationship with Australia.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian Financial Review, President Wahid said: "To understand each other we need to be strong and I believe John Howard has that kind of strength, in spite of the criticism, and I was the one who had the loudest criticism."
President Wahid's conciliatory comments included a desire to "not leave him [Mr Howard] in the cold" and for the Prime Minister to "not be punished" for what his critics say is his lack of understanding of Asia.
Asked whether he agreed with the comments, the President said: "If we think he is [unschooled about Asia], the challenge remains to make him know." He said that both he and Mr Howard needed to have the "strength of character to be convinced that we can learn from each other". "If Mr Howard is strong, like I think he is, then I can learn from him and he can learn from me," President Wahid said.
The President's surprising overture puts the onus on Mr Howard to make the next move in building new personal ties between the two leaders before President Wahid's first official visit to Australia, scheduled for May.
Relations between the two were marred from the start by a war of words that broke out shortly after the President's election last year when he labelled Mr Howard as "childish" and said Indonesia was more important to Australia than Australia was to Indonesia.
Apparently in protest at Australia's role in leading United Nations peacekeeping forces in East Timor, President Wahid snubbed Australia from his first round of overseas trips, in which he visited all of Indonesia's other significant neighbours.
Mr Howard is widely regarded among the Indonesian political elite as being anti-Asian, a view that dates to the doubts he voiced about Asian immigration in the 1980s and was reinforced by his refusal to denounce Pauline Hanson in the 1990s.
Many influential Indonesians, even those firmly opposed to their army's atrocities in East Timor, believe Mr Howard diminished Indonesia with "triumphalism" over Australian troops' success in East Timor and were offended by the Prime Minister's apparent concurrence with the view that Australia should act as a US "deputy" in Asia.
But in the interview President Wahid expressed an admiration for Australia's successful replication of European culture in the Antipodes, a view that will strike a chord with Mr Howard.
"You built up Australia from the ashes of the old world. You built a new Australia which you can be proud of. We admire you for that and it is the basis for further mutual understanding between both sides," he said.
The President said that for Australia to emulate the "stability, the continuity and the main features of the original civilisation is not a small thing".
He said he would like Australia to similarly admire Indonesia for its nation-building efforts. "You should look to the ability of Indonesia to stay together as a nation even though it is so diversified. From our uneven past, we have emerged as a nation with strength of purpose, a nation which happens to lie beside Australia. So both neighbours should stay together," he said.
However, the President said that to be good neighbours, Australians needed to understand Asian civilisations and Asian geography. "If you fail to have those things, then you won't understand us," he said.
President Wahid, who built his political career as a Muslim leader, also said that Australians generally did not understand the Muslim religion – which is followed by 85 per cent of Indonesians – and he blamed the international media for portraying Islam as "militaristic". He said that the Christian and Islamic cultures had many things in common including "respect for human beings and respect for civilisation".
Although the date of his Australian visit has not been finalised, President Wahid said he expected to come to Australia in May on the way home from a visit to the United States, where he will meet President Clinton for the second time since becoming Indonesia's leader last October.
President Wahid is the first Indonesian leader to know Australia well. He has many friends in the country and has visited many times, before his appointment as President, to address academic forums and receive medical treatment.