Albanese and Prabowo talk defence ties, China and need to 'de-escalate' tensions
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The news: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto have talked up the growing military ties between their two nations and the need to “de-escalate" tensions.
The context: Albanese met with Prabowo in Lima, Peru, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Thursday morning local time.
Walking into the room, Prabowo was talking about King Charles, with Albanese responding: “He’s a nice man.”
Prabowo, the country’s former Defence Minister, also praised Australia’s Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles as his “good friend”, before Albanese joked that Marles was now Acting Prime Minister “so anything could happen”.
Prabowo said Australia was a “very good friend of Indonesia”, and that despite some “ups and downs, we have been neighbours forever”.
He said he was looking forward to continuing to build closer relations between the two countries, and expressed his desire for greater Australian participation in the Indonesian economy.
After the Indonesian President referred to his plan to embark on “some sort of management with the Chinese to de-escalate and lower the temperature”, media were ushered out of the room.
Prabowo landed in Lima from the United States, where he met with President Joe Biden and also posted a video of his phone call with Donald Trump in which he repeatedly lavished praise on the President-elect.
Albanese then met with Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, congratulating her for hosting the APEC economic leaders' summit and pledging to work closely with the South American country on trade, climate and mining.
What they said: “Thank you so much for the invitation to meet with you here this morning, and I once again congratulate you again on your election. It’s only two months since I hosted you in Canberra,” Albanese said to Prabowo.
“As we speak, our defence forces are involved in a joint exercise in northern Australia, once again showing the importance of that security relationship that was finalised between the Defence Minister [Marles] and yourself just prior to your inauguration.
“And of course, our economic relationship is so important as well, I want to see more and more cooperation between our two great nations.
“I’m so pleased that a good friend of Australia is the President, carrying on from… the wonderful relationship we had with President [Joko] Widodo, your predecessor. I look forward to the relationship being even stronger into the future.”
Prabowo said: “I am happy with the state of our security cooperation – police to police and military to military.”
“We have very common problems and the context is very serious… with people smuggling."
Prabowo said he was trying to improve Indonesia’s relationship with all its neighbours, including Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
“And some sort of management with the Chinese to de-escalate and lower the temperature.”
The source: Capital Brief
