BURMA-INDONESIA JOINT COMMISSION MEETS IN JAKARTA

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 JAKARTA 000507 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/23/2017 TAGS: PREL ASEAN BM ID SUBJECT: BURMA-INDONESIA JOINT COMMISSION MEETS IN JAKARTA Classified By: Charge d'Affaires John A. Heffern. Reason 1.4 (b, d) ¶1. (C) Summary. After three postponements, the Burma-Indonesia Joint Commission met in Jakarta on February 14 - 15. The Commission agreed to develop bilateral cooperation in sectors including commerce and trade, forestry, tourism, law enforcement, culture, and education, but more detailed agreements will be necessary to implement these plans. Indonesia may send a trade mission to Burma later this year. Indonesia also invited the Burmese armed forces to send officers to its Command and Staff College in Bandung. In a closed one-on-one meeting with Burmese Foreign Minister U Nyan Win, Foreign Minister Wirajuda urged that the Burmese regime pursue reform and reconciliation. U Nyan Win provided minimal assurances to this effect. According to a working-level Department of Foreign Affairs contact, Burma appears to have rejected ASEAN's proposal to create a three-country "commission" to engage Burma. End summary. ¶2. (C) The Burma-Indonesia Joint Commission held its inaugural meeting in Jakarta on February 14 - 15. Burmese Foreign Minister U Nyan Win headed the six-member Burmese delegation. On February 14, a sub-ministerial preliminary Senior Officials Meeting was held, headed on the Indonesian side by Primo Alui Joelianto, Director General for Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. The following day, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda met for a one-hour one-on-one meeting with U Nyan Win. The Joint Commission then met for the rest of the afternoon. The Commission identified a range of sectors for expanded bilateral cooperation including commerce and trade, forestry, tourism, law enforcement, culture, and education. That evening, the Indonesians hosted a dinner for their Burmese counterparts. ¶3. (C) Gudadi Sasongko, Deputy Director for Indochina, China, and Burma at the Department of Foreign Affairs, provided a readout on February 21. He opened by saying that Indonesia regarded its bilateral relationship with Burma as historically important. Despite its ups and downs over the years, Indonesians still recalled the two countries' mutual solidarity during their independence struggles. Indonesia, he said, had strongly supported Burma's re-entry into the Non Aligned-Movement in 1992 and admission to ASEAN in 1997. Presidents Abdurrachman Wahid and Megawati had both visited Burma, and the proposal for the Joint Commission had been agreed during President Yudhoyono's visit in March 2006. The Commission's first meeting had been postponed three times at the behest of Burma, simply on the grounds that the "timing was not convenient." Sasongko said that the Joint Commission's long-term aim was to increase Indonesia's engagement and leverage with Burma. Despite the two countries' good historic relationship, Indonesia's economic ties were negligible compared with those of Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, India, and China, Sasongko noted. Indonesia, he said, felt "left behind." He said the Joint Commission would create a forum more conducive to real dialogue than brief, tense exchanges in or on the margins of multilateral Asian events such as ASEAN Summits, ARF, or APEC. Ministerial One-On-One -------------- ¶4. (C) Sasongko said that the two sides had agreed to confine discussion of Burma's internal politics to the one-on-one meeting between the two Ministers. Foreign Minister Wirajuda, he said, had only provided a sketchy readout of this meeting. Sasongko said that U Nyan Win told Wirajuda that Burma intended to complete the National Convention by the end of this year, and that it would create a power-sharing arrangement between the military and civilian elements. Sasongko noted that some Indonesian media had incorrectly reported that Burma would have a new constitution by the end of this year; what was being described was the National Convention. Wirajuda, he said, had pressed U Nyan Win on Aung San Suu Kyi, but had only managed to extract a commitment that her doctor would be permitted access to her. Overall, Sasongko said, it was extremely difficult to draw the Burmese into any discussion of internal politics or reform; they simply ignored the questions or provided vague, general answers. According to media reports, the Burmese side did express concern that Burma would be targeted again in United Nations fora on the issues of child soldiers and persecution of religious minorities. JAKARTA 00000507 002 OF 003 ¶5. (C) Sasongko acknowledged that Foreign Minister Wirajuda faced criticism and scrutiny of his Burma policy from Indonesia's Parliament and NGOs. To address this, he said, the Department of Foreign Affairs was being careful to publicly characterize the Joint Commission meeting as a modest first step aimed at advancing basic bilateral issues. Joint Commission Sets a Baseline -------------- ¶6. (C) Sasongko said that the first meeting of the Joint Commission was intended simply meant to identify areas for expanded bilateral cooperation; these were spelled out in the "Agreed Minutes" signed by each side. He noted that the Burmese delegation, which consisted of six officials, was dwarfed by its Indonesian counterpart, a 22-member interagency team. The sectors identified were trade, investment, culture, education, forestry, agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. In most of these areas, simple proposals had been floated. Burma, for example, had expertise in management of teak forestry and had offered to send experts in this field. Indonesia would, he said, look into the possibility of starting non-stop service to Rangoon by its national carrier Garuda. In culture, the two countries would explore an exchange of language teachers. Sasongko also confirmed that Indonesia had invited Burmese officers for training at the Command and Staff College in Bandung, but said there were as yet no concrete plans. The exchange would be of the type the College currently offered to officers from other foreign countries, he said. Much Work Ahead -------------- ¶7. (C) All these proposals will require extensive follow-up. Sasongko said his directorate had been tasked with creating an inter-agency Plan of Action to flesh out the various initiatives. Separate Memoranda of Understanding would be necessary for most of these areas, he said. The Joint Commission would create an Economics and Investment Subcommittee, and Indonesia hoped to send a Trade Mission to Burma later this year. The Indonesian Embassy in Rangoon, he said, would also have to become much more active in following up on the Joint Commission's meeting. ¶8. (C) Sasongko said the Department of Foreign Affairs was also considering launching a second track to promote dialogue among Burmese and Indonesian think tanks and academics. On the Indonesian side, likely participants would be the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),the Habibie Center, the Department of Defense-affiliated Institute for National Resilience (LEMHANNAS),and representatives of various Indonesian universities. The goal, Sasongko said, would be in part to expose the Burmese to the Indonesian experience of the transition from authoritarianism. In this regard, he added that he hoped the Burmese delegation's recent stay in Jakarta had given them a clue as to how Indonesia had changed for the better from the old days. Other Initiatives on Hold -------------- ¶9. (C) Turning to other efforts to engage Burma, Sasongko said that although former Foreign Minister Ali Alatas had not been formally relieved of his role as Presidential Envoy to Burma, the GOI had no plans at the moment to deploy him again. Similarly, nothing had come of the GOI's idea, floated previously, to appoint a former senior military figure as a special envoy to the SPDC. Asked whether ASEAN would follow through on its idea of appointing a "Three Country Commission" (Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines) to engage ASEAN, Sasongko said this was looking very unlikely. The Burmese, he said, had effectively vetoed the initiative by their usual tactic of refusing to respond to it. He said that Yuri Thamrin, the Department of Foreign Affairs' Director for Asia and the Pacific, had characterized the difficulty of engaging the Burmese by comparing the task with holding a bar of soap: if you squeeze too tightly, it jumps out of your grasp, but it you hold it too loosely, it slips away. The trick, he said, was to find the right amount of pressure somewhere in between. Comment JAKARTA 00000507 003 OF 003 -------------- ¶10. (C) In setting up a Joint Commission, Indonesia is applying a mechanism that it uses in many of its other bilateral relationships. The Commission sets a baseline for expanded bilateral sectoral cooperation, and creates a framework to keep progress on track. We suspect that it also serves as a tool for the Department of Foreign Affairs to manage the GOI's unwieldy interagency process. It will probably be years before the initiatives set up in the Joint Commission's first meeting bear any fruit. It is clear, however, that Indonesia is not linking this sectoral cooperation to improvement in the SPDC's domestic policies. On the contrary, the GOI has opted to compartmentalize the minimal dialogue on reform and human rights that it chooses to engage in. In the past, the GOI has used the term "constructive engagement" in dealing with Burma, and this is still evidently its approach despite the fact that it has had no appreciable influence on the SPDC's behavior to date. Mission will, however, continue to press the GOI to engage Burma on human rights and democratization. End comment HEFFERN