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
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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


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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