N. Korean leaders plan RI visit

JAKARTA. North Korea’s second-highest leader is slated to travel to Jakarta to meet with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono amid global concerns over the country’s nuclear program and recent failed rocket launch.

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa confirmed that a meeting between Kim Yong-nam and the President has been planned.

“There have been intensified talks for some time between Pyongyang and Jakarta over the planned visit,” said Marty, who refused to elaborate on the planned agenda.

“The two governments are still assessing the plan.”

A source at the Presidential Palace said Kim and several of the country’s ministers would arrive in June, with talks over global security at the top of the agenda.

Kim, 84, is the president of North Korea’s Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, whose power is believed to be just below that of the country’s new leader, Kim Jong-un.

He is also known to function as North Korea’s foreign minister.

Should the plan be realized, it would be Kim’s third visit to Indonesia in the past decade. He last visited in 2005 to attend the Asian-African Conference. In 2002, he met then-president Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose family’s relationship with the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dates back to 1964.

The meeting could be significant for Indonesia’s global role, particularly given that the visit was being planned amid international condemnation of Pyongyang’s rocket launch.

“We’re hoping the meeting will materialize, given the importance of North Korea to the world’s security,” Yudhoyono’s foreign affairs spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said.

Experts believe the meeting will be an opportunity for Yudhoyono to persuade the “rogue” nation to comply with international calls for stability in the region.

“Yudhoyono needs to assure Kim that the world will back him up if he is eager to ‘silently’ have greater control of North Korea and smoothly bring change in the peninsula,” foreign affairs expert Hikmahanto Juwana of the University of Indonesia said.

He believed Kim could play a big role as he was politically more mature than North Korea’s leader, the 20-something Kim Jong-un, who inherited the leadership from his father, Kim Jong-il, who died last December.

“It will be a paramount diplomatic achievement if Yudhoyono and Marty can lure North Korea to end its nuclear program, advocate democracy and forge reunification with its neighbor South Korea,” Hikmahanto said.

Marty, however, refused say if Yudhoyono would use the planned meeting to ease tensions in the Korean peninsula, such as by pushing for an end to its nuclear program.

In 2006, Yudhoyono cancelled a planned visit to Pyongyang, which many believed was due to North Korea’s decision to launch a Taepodong-2 long-range missile.

Although expressing concern over Friday’s failed rocket launch and calling for all parties to exercise restraint, Marty said that Indonesia has maintained a good relationship with North Korea.

Indonesia has adopted what it calls a “free-and-active” foreign policy, which allows it to be consistent in counting both North and South Korea as friends.

Indonesia is among less than 20 countries that have embassies in Pyongyang.

Kim’s planned visit would provide another boost for Yudhoyono’s diplomatic clout amid the country’s strong economic growth.

The President has had at least nine bilateral meetings so far this year. Last week, he met visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. In two separate occasions last month, Yudhoyono met Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the Bogor Presidential Palace in West Java.

Yudhoyono also met China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing in March, on his way to Seoul to attend the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, and had a meeting with South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak.

On the sidelines of the summit, Yudhoyono also had meetings with the leaders of Pakistan, Ukraine, Norway and Denmark.

The President is scheduled to meet with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key on Tuesday. A source at the Palace also said German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also expected to come to Jakarta in the middle of the year.

“These bilateral talks have proven that Indonesia’s profile in the global arena is expanding and that many leaders have more confidence in Indonesia’s role as a prominent mediator in many global issues,” Hikmahanto said. (Bagus BT Saragih/ The Jakarta Post)