Stephen Fitzpatrick, Tanjung Pinang – Kevin Rudd might have been given another week to solve his Oceanic Viking public relations disaster, but that doesn't mean Indonesia is very happy about it.

As the Australian Customs vessel with its cargo of 78 Sri Lankans sits in waters off Tanjung Pinang and the monsoon makes its first early forays across the Riau archipelago, there is extreme disquiet in Jakarta.

The Foreign Ministry's director for diplomatic security, Sujatmiko, held nothing back when he declared Indonesia had been "more than patient" on the standoff and warned of the danger that "an issue this small could damage the relationship between the two countries".

Sujatmiko spent years living and studying international relations in Australia, and received a PhD at the Australian National University. The softly spoken and cultured diplomat knows exactly the impact of his words on an Australian audience. He and his colleagues feel they have done everything possible to honour the commitment made by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to Rudd in Jakarta almost three weeks ago to take the Tamil asylum-seekers, after their boat was rescued in Indonesia's zone of responsibility.

"But once the commitment is discharged, you no longer have a commitment," he says. "We have to find a balance between helping out a neighbour, and meeting Indonesia's own needs."

And those needs are, largely, domestic political ones. Under the country's decentralisation policy, which gives local leaders such as Riau Islands provincial governor Ismeth Abdullah genuine power to stand up to the central government, the support of the regions is crucial to Yudhoyono's ability to govern.

And while Jakarta understands the need for damage control around the issue of the Oceanic Viking, it also acknowledges the importance, in the burgeoning democracy Indonesia is becoming, of a free press.

When Australian officials asked Sujatmiko to stop journalists from taking small charter boats out to the ship, anchored 10 nautical miles off Tanjung Pinang, he shrugged and said he couldn't. "We have a democratic view of how the press works," he later said he had told them. "What's more, this is my country, not yours."

The Australians dealing with the standoff believe that if the Sri Lankans had not been able to communicate with the world – through throwing notes overboard, and through using phone numbers smuggled on board since their arrival at Tanjung Pinang, as well as ones they had hidden with them – the matter might have been resolved differently.