Interview with Jim Middleton, Newsline, Australia Network

Subjects: Thailand-Cambodia border dispute; Unrest in Egypt, Turkey, Aid to Indonesia

Transcript, E&OE, proof only

8 February 2011

JIM MIDDLETON: Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has just returned from a visit to Africa and Europe where, among other things, he pressed a bid for beefed up processes to resolve the many lingering border and territorial disputes in Asia, especially now that the region has achieved global economic significance.

Foreign Minister, welcome to the program.

KEVIN RUDD: A pleasure to be on the program.

JIM MIDDLETON: First of all, this border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, how worried are you is Australia that such a small area geographically of little or no strategic importance can cause such intemperate and, indeed, lethal behaviour between two neighbours over such a long period of time?

KEVIN RUDD: We do find it concerning, as do others within the region. The Secretary-General of ASEAN has issued a statement on this. I noticed my friend and colleague, Marty Natalegawa, the Indonesian Foreign Minister is now in Bangkok and Phnom Penh talking this matter through with the Thai and Cambodian governments.

I think it absolutely necessary that we have restraint from both parties, because let's stand back for a moment and look what we've built up with ASEAN over the last several decades.

What used to be a set of hostile security and political relationships have become over that time a community of common security interests, and we haven't had a major outbreak of hostilities for a long, long time. This, therefore, needs to be nipped in the bud and nipped in the bud now.

JIM MIDDLETON: Is it a reminder then too of the need, given the large number of territorial disputes within the region of the need for seriously beefing up mechanisms to deal — for dispute resolution within the Asia-Pacific now that it is an area of such global significance?

KEVIN RUDD: Well this, certainly, is a discussion I've just had at the Munich Security Conference with various European foreign and defence ministers, because it goes to the lack of institutional arrangements in East Asia and the Pacific for effectively dealing with regional security disputes.

ASEAN, obviously, has a key role to play within the 10 member states of South-East Asia. But if you look beyond that and the outstanding security and territorial concerns that we have, obviously, on the Korean Peninsula, East China Sea, South China Sea, swinging around through South-East Asia. And then, of course, we have unresolved border disputes between India and China. Then, of course, the outstanding problems over Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

This whole region of ours has a pretty raw set of security relationships which is why we in Australia, in the period that I was Prime Minister, actively promoted the concept of an Asia-Pacific community. Therefore, we've got to use this expanded East Asian summit now to move in that direction. And with America joining that body done in the last several months, we have some potential for using it to develop confidence and security-building measures in our part of the world.

JIM MIDDLETON: Okay, let's turn now to Egypt, which is a matter of considerable global concern. There have been more incidents involving foreign journalists being taken into custody by the security authorities, including two Australians. You're talking to the Egyptian Foreign Minister about this. What are you telling him?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, I've spoken to the Egyptian Foreign Minister in the flesh in Addis Ababa only a week or so ago when this crisis really hit the streets in downtown Cairo. I spoke to him again on the phone several days ago, particularly about my concern about the security of journalists, both foreign and Australian, and we've been dealing with his office literally in the last 24, 36 hours on the matter concerning Jason Koutsoukis and John Lyons from The Australian.

Now, I'll be speaking to the Foreign Minister again this evening, because we're getting too many reports about what appears to be a bit of a deliberate campaign against the foreign journalistic presence in Cairo.

We take the freedom of the press seriously. We take the security of Australian and foreign correspondents operating in conflict zones seriously, and, therefore, I'll be very direct with my Egyptian counterpart on the need for proper protections to be applied.

JIM MIDDLETON: Do you have any doubt that these detentions, these actions against the Australian journalists and others are anything other than a deliberate attempt at intimidation of them, in particular, and of their employers to try to force them out of Egypt, so that the Mubarak Government can do whatever it sees necessary in bringing these protests to a close, to clinging on to power?

KEVIN RUDD: Well on the question of President Mubarak our position has been, throughout this crisis, we need to see the democratic transformation of the region. That political reform and fundamental reform must begin in Egypt now. But to the precise form of that, over the period ahead, is a matter for the Egyptian people.

But we further said throughout this, that protesters and others associated with them and those covering events, should be handled peacefully and certainly in the absence of violence.

On the core of your question concerning who is driving this crackdown, as it appears, on journalists I note in the written reports from both Koutsoukis and Lyons today that they refer to military officers being present in their incarceration. I'm concerned by that because the army is under the direct control of the government and, therefore, it would seem to me to be, in the absence of other evidence, probably part of an orchestrated campaign against foreign journalists.

JIM MIDDLETON: It does seem, does it not, that these incidents, along with the orchestrated violence against protesters, the incidents of that kind, that this is about stopping the protests, about prolonging the current administration. That it gives the lie to President Mubarak's suggestions of a transition to a new government?

KEVIN RUDD: On the core element of your question, which is that — is the regime — is the Egyptian government directly behind this crackdown against journalists, in the absence of further information to the contrary, I can only conclude that that is the case. That is why I'm also speaking to the Foreign Minister this evening.

But I'd add one caveat and that is what I have seen on the streets of Cairo over the last week or more has been a series of often confusing events on the streets. There's been a lot of confusion, a lot of chaos, but in the midst of it some organised activity as well and organised actions. So separating out, as it were, the sheep from the goats here is a difficult task, but I don't depart from my earlier comments about this appearing, in the absence of other information, to being an instrument of policy on the part of the Egyptian Government, which is why we are raising it directly with them.

JIM MIDDLETON: While you were overseas, you spent a deal of time in Turkey which has chosen a quite different path from some of its Islamic neighbours. Should Turkey be something of a model for the Arab world as it goes through these trying times?

KEVIN RUDD: It will be for the Arab world to reach their own conclusions, but I noted when I was both in Istanbul and Ankara, talking to my Turkish counterpart Foreign Minister Davutoglu and the Turkish President that a lot of the street protesters in Cairo are holding up placards saying we want Turkish style democracy because there you have Turkey, a very large country, 70 or 80 million people. You have a Muslim country and one which has engineered, with some difficulty over the last several decades, a robust, pluralist, democratic system. And there's a very lively and animated and open political debate within Turkey itself.

So I believe Turkey does have a role to play as a bit of a standard bearer for a country, which belongs to the wider Muslim world, but which has chartered this democratic path through the middle. I think the other reason to engage the Turks and part of my reason for being there is that Turkey increasingly has an activist, independent foreign policy across the Middle East, across the Balkans, across the Caucuses and into Africa as well.

It's important for us with our fellow G20 partner, Turkey, to engage them also on this new independent course in their foreign policy, because it affects our interests as well.

JIM MIDDLETON: One final question if I may and briefly too, Minister, the Australian Opposition's proposing to cut something like half a billion dollars in Australian assistance to schools in Indonesia. The Opposition's questioning whether it's value for money. What evidence do you have that this program has, indeed, turned young Indonesians away from religious extremism?

KEVIN RUDD: If you go to the specifics of this program Jim, the first thing I'd say is that this program was begun by John Winston Howard, the former prime minister of Australia. It was begun more than five years ago and we have had two sets of evaluation reports commissioned into it, as to whether the program is reaching its objectives or not.  Both of those evaluations have come out positively and it was on the basis of that, that the Prime Minister recently, in a visit to Indonesia, announced a continuation of the program into the future.

And go to the core of it; what does it seek to do? It seeks not just to build schools and because poorer folk in various parts of provincial Indonesia don't have adequate school structures, but also provides training programs for virtually all of Indonesia’s school principals and furthermore, on top of that, enables us to participate right across the country in developing mainstream curriculum for Islamic schools within Indonesia so that they are based on — let's call it a broad canons of knowledge and not simply questions of religious dogma.

That's why the Howard Government commissioned it. That's why Foreign Minister Downer, when he was in office, said this was an effective means by which to prosecute de-radicalisation in Islam and that's why this Australian Government has not only in the past supported this Howard Government initiative, but we've elected to continue it.

JIM MIDDLETON: Minister, once again thank you very much.

KEVIN RUDD: Thanks for having me on the program.

END

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