Tensions between Union and Jakarta thaw in run up to poll

Date: 04/03/1999

By Gareth Harding

Relations between the EU and Indonesia are at their warmest for more than three decades following the country's moves towards democracy and its recent promise to grant East Timor a greater degree of independence.

The Union is helping the Asian archipelago to organise elections in June, is planning to step up development aid to the country and is playing its part in digging Jakarta out of the financial hole it is currently in.

However, given the scale of the problems faced by Indonesia, critics have questioned whether the EU is doing enough to assist the world's fourth most populous country.

Having grown by almost 7% per annum for more than 30 years, the economy took a nose-dive in 1997. The value of the national currency, the rupiah, has fallen by almost 80% in the last two years, unemployment has rocketed and growth has dried up.

The inability of President Suharto to deal with the country's underlying problems meant that what was originally a financial crisis snowballed into a full-blown social, economic and political crisis, leading to the toppling of the Suharto regime last May.

After 32 years of dictatorial rule, the reformist government of President Habibie has shaken up the political system and promised to hold the country's first 'free and fair' parliamentary elections.

"It is very much in the interest of the EU that these elections take place properly," said German State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz last week.

However, the amount of money the EU is handing over to Indonesia to help it achieve this end has been sharply criticised.

On a visit to Brussels last month, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer compared the €10 million which the bloc gave to Cambodia to help prepare for its elections last year with the €2.5 million it has stumped up for Jakarta. EU foreign ministers suggested last week that this fund might be increased to €7 million, but critics say that for a country with almost 300 million people, this still amounts to no more than a drop in the ocean.

The Union is nevertheless banking on a smooth transition to democracy to put its relations with Indonesia on a more stable footing.

Speaking at a major conference on the EU and Indonesia last week, the head of the European Commission's Directorate-General for external relations (DGIA) Enrico Cioffi said that the task was "mammoth, but if the elections are fair, violence is minimised and the administration of the elections is impartial, then the rewards could be great".

The recent decision by Jakarta to offer East Timor the option of independence has gone a long way to bolster ties between the two blocs.

Since Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975, relations have been frosty, with the Netherlands cutting off development assistance and Lisbon blocking a new cooperation agreement between the Union and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) because of Jakarta's poor human rights record.

Despite the interim government's improvements in this field, the EU remains deeply concerned about the flare-up of ethnic violence and lingering human rights abuses in the archipelago.

Some Brussels-based diplomats argue that Indonesia desperately needs food aid to stave off a full-scale famine. The European Commission recently sent a team of aid officials to gauge the population's needs.