Indonesia Buys SU-30

Indonesian leader calls for new trade ties with Russia

MOSCOW, April 22 (AFP) – 15:28 GMT – Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri called for a new beginning in relations with Russia on Tuesday, vowing to boost trade that amounted to just 170 million dollars (156 million euros) last year.
“Whether we like it or not, we have to start from the beginning if we want to realize our hopes and aspirations,” Megawati said in a speech to a Russian-Indonesian business forum in Moscow, quoted by RIA-Novosti news agency.

Worth 139 million dollars, Indonesian exports to Russia last year more than quadrupled Russia’s 31 million dollars of exports to Indonesia.

Over the past five years total bilateral trade has averaged just 120 million dollars, according to Russia’s Kommersant business daily.

Megawati, who arrived in the Russian capital on Sunday for a five-day visit, told the forum that “one of the main goals of my visit is the desire to help further direct contact between our two countries in the business sphere”.

“Our relations have gone through periods of ups and downs,” she said, saying bilateral trade had never fully recovered after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and Russia’s 1998 financial meltdown.

Megawati’s visit to Moscow is the first by an Indonesian leader since former dictator Suharto visited in 1989. Her father, former president Sukarno, built close ties with Russia in the 1950s.

The Indonesian leader’s visit to Russia comes at a time when relations with the United States are chilled over the war in Iraq, and while Indonesia is still subject to a four-year-old US arms embargo.

Megawati signed an arms agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday amid media reports that she was expected to seal the purchase of four Russian-made Sukhoi fighter planes worth between 100 and 120 million dollars.

After receiving an honorary degree from Russia’s top state foreign policy university on Tuesday, Megawati toured Sukhoi’s research centre and airfield outside Moscow and witnessed a test flight of the Russian aerospace firm’s SU-27 fighter jet, Interfax reported.

Indonesia came close to buying four SU-30 fighter jets in the mid-1990s — but the deal was put off after Asia’s 1998 financial collapse.

“Today Indonesia would like to get back to those plans,” Sukhoi spokesman Yury Chervakov told Interfax.

Since 1999 Indonesia has been under a US arms embargo which Washington refuses to lift until the country comes clean on its military’s backing of militia violence in East Timor that year.

Megawati told the forum she would “do all possible to increase ties between our countries — in terms of economy, trade, military technology and investment”, according to ITAR-TASS news agency.

Megawati’s trade minister, Rini Suwandi, told the forum that clinching the fighter jet deal “will be a great success for our countries”, adding that Russia’s government arms trade agency Rosoboronexport and Indonesia’s Bulok would handle the deal.

The minister said she expected trade between the two countries to double by next year, ITAR-TASS said

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