By Kawthar Lanbari
Manama May 3 (BNA): Indonesian Ambassador Chilman Arisman said his country supported the call by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to continue the national dialogue.
“Dialogue is the only way to overcome differences between many political factions in Bahrain because they can sit together,” the ambassador said. “We have a lot of experience in Indonesia as we have 300 ethnic groups. So, we always sit together to overcome any differences between political parties,” he told Bahrain News Agency (BNA).
The diplomat hailed the efforts exerted by HM King Hamad to promote security and peacce.
“The efforts are good because if there is no violence, and everything is settled peacefully through dialogue, conference, and “mushawara” (consultation), then that is the best. It may take time to reach objectives, but I am very optimistic that the dialogue will succeed in bringing the necessary input in order for all the factions to live together peacefully,” he said.
Ambassador Arisman insisted his country rejected violence.
“Terrorism and violence are not the way to achieve good because only with conference, only with “mushawara”, only with dialogue, we can achieve our objectives,” he said.
Bahrain and Indonesia have been enjoying good and cordial relations for a long time, he added.
“We established diplomatic relations in 1976 and the government of the Republic of Indonesia opened its embassy in Manama on December 29, 2010 and I am proud to be the first resident ambassador in Bahrain. I think Bahrain is a very beautiful country and has a very long history of civilizations and it is a country with which Indonesia has very long friendly bilateral relations because we have many common denominators,” he said. “However, our challenge in the future may be to move to the next stage as both peoples still need to know each other better– I mean for Bahrainis, Indonesia is still a little bit unknown and vice versa for Indonesians for whom Bahrain is still unknown. So, this way we try to promote people-to-people contacts and we encourage officials from both countries to visit each other more often.”
Referring to past exchanges of visits, the ambassador said that the Foreign Minister of Indonesia Marty Natalegawa visited Bahrain on November 24-26, 2013 and attended the Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) and the Asian-GCC ministerial.
“During his visit, the minister also had a bilateral meeting with the Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa and this is one of the high-level Indonesian delegations’ visits to Bahrain since the establishment of the Indonesian embassy here to make our bilateral relations fuller, more meaningful and closer.”
However, the ambassador said there was a need to promote people-to-people contacts.
“We have already tried to promote some kind of programmes. We for example arranged a visit by journalists and travel writers from Bahrain to Indonesia. In June or May 2013, we also arranged the same scheme when we invited journalists and travel writers to visit Bali, the most famous island in Indonesia. In fact, Bali is more popular than Indonesia. We make it easier for Bahraini people and also the communities here to visit. Not many Bahrainis have visited Indonesia. So, we try to promote people-to-people contact.”
The ambassador said that bilateral trade with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was only $116 million.
“As for Bahrain- Indonesia, the balance of bilateral trade is more in favour of Manama. Bahrain exports more than it imports from Indonesia. However, there are a lot of opportunities to increase bilateral trade and we do encourage the business community Bahrain to import more products from Indonesia. Handicraft, stationery, agricultural products, wood products and automotive spare parts are some of the items they can import. We also encourage Bahrain business people to do business more often with my country because Indonesia is very vast, and we have three different time zones. The distance from Arctic to Papua is like the distance from the west coast to the east coast in the USA and like the distance from London to Istanbul in Europe.
“We have a population of 240 million people and in terms of population I think we are number four globally, after China, India, and USA. We encourage the business community here to visit Indonesia. We also try to promote trade export. We will have a Trade Expo in Jakarta in October 2014 and hopefully strong business delegations will visit Jakarta and attend the Trade Exhibition because they can find many projects that can be marketed in Bahrain.”
Ambassador Arisman said that Bahrain and Indonesia shared views on numerous international developments.
“With Bahrain, thank God, we always have similar positions on many issues, like Palestine and the Middle East. We meet when we want both countries to have a certain position under the UN or under the OIC. The two capitals always support each other.”
He said that around 8,000 Indonesians lived in Bahrain.
“I think it is a moderate number compared with other GCC countries because our largest communities are in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait. But they live in Bahrain very peacefully and I would like to express my thanks to the Government of Bahrain for the provision of their gracious hospitality that makes Indonesians feel like they are at home. So, I think all the Indonesian citizens living in Bahrain feel at home and as an integral part of the Bahrain society and I wish that this happy situation will continue in the years to come.”