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SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA) - Australia is considering signing a new defence and security agreement with Indonesia to replace a treaty that was scrapped after Canberra led United Nations peacekeepers into East Timor in 1999. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday the government was aware that Indonesian President-elect Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had called for the security pact - negotiated by former prime minister Paul Keating in the mid-1990s - to be renewed last year during a trip to Australia.
But he said the two countries were more likely to negotiate a broader treaty rather than simply reviving the old one, which he said was 'a fairly meaningless document', abandoned along with joint military exercises. 'We'd be looking at some kind of new agreement and a broader agreement with Indonesia,' Mr Downer told Australia's Channel Nine.
'It's a bit hypothetical. We haven't made any commitment yet to negotiating such a treaty but it's something we are giving consideration to. 'But obviously 50 per cent of this is going to depend on the extent to which the Indonesians would want to do it. Whether Dr Yudhoyono would want to so soon after his inauguration, I just don't know,' Mr Downer said. Any new treaty would have to include an existing memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries on fighting terrorism.
The MOU was signed by Prime Minister John Howard and former Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2002, in response to the Sept 11 attacks on the United States.
Mr Downer said the issue of a treaty and Australia's plan to base counter-terrorism flying squads in South-east Asia were unlikely to be raised when Mr Howard attended Dr Yudhoyono's inauguration on Wednesday. The Foreign Minister said he was confident the Australian government would have a good relationship with Indonesia's new leader.
'He's committed to taking a strong stand against terrorism... He's committed to having a very productive, a very constructive relationship with Australia,' Mr Downer said. The countries have established close cooperation on counter-terrorism since the October 2002 Bali bombing by the Al-Qaeda linked Jemaah Islamiah, in which 88 Australians died.
Relations between Jakarta and Canberra were strained when Australia headed a multinational peacekeeping force to end a bloody rampage by Indonesian military-sponsored militias in East Timor following the former province's vote for independence.
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