JAKARTA: Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto will set off on his first foreign tour next month, with stops in China and the United States, local media reported Tuesday, as the new leader seeks a more prominent position for Jakarta on the world stage.
The 73-year-old ex-general was sworn in on October 20, pledging to stick to Jakarta’s traditionally non-aligned foreign policy while making the world’s fourth-most populous nation more active abroad.
On his first planned foreign visits since taking power, he plans to visit China, the United States, Peru, Brazil and Britain, newspaper Kompas reported, citing presidential palace sources.
He will reportedly embark on a state visit to Beijing on November 8 to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Qiang before heading to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden.
The date of his Washington visit was not reported but the US election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump falls on November 5, days before Prabowo is scheduled to leave Indonesia.
A former general under late autocrat Suharto, Prabowo was once put on a US visa blacklist over his rights record in Indonesia and East Timor, but the Trump administration lifted it years later.
Prabowo will then fly on to Peru to meet President Dina Boluarte and attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Peruvian capital Lima, before heading to the G20 summit in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, the report said.
His tour will end in Britain where he will meet King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it said.
“I can’t confirm his visits yet,” Hasan Nasbi, the presidential palace spokesman, told AFP.
The foreign ministry did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
“The issue of cooperation and efforts to improve the welfare of each country will be a central issue during the visits,” Kompas wrote.
After his election win in February, Prabowo used his eight-month transition period to visit more than a dozen countries to showcase a more active foreign policy than his predecessor Joko Widodo, who focused more on domestic issues like the economy.
Indonesia’s Prabowo to visit China, US on first foreign trip: report
https://arab.news/jbsuf
Indonesia’s Prabowo to visit China, US on first foreign trip: report
- He plans to visit China, US, Peru, Brazil and Britain
- The date of his Washington visit was not reported
WHO chief says reasons US gave for withdrawing ‘untrue’
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO
- And in a post on X, Tedros added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue”
GENEVA: The head of the UN’s health agency on Saturday pushed back against Washington’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismissing US criticism of the WHO as “untrue.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that US announcement this week that it had formally withdrawn from the WHO “makes both the US and the world less safe.”
And in a post on X, he added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue.”
He insisted: “WHO has always engaged with the US, and all Member States, with full respect for their sovereignty.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO.
They accused the agency, of numerous “failures during the Covid-19 pandemic” and of acting “repeatedly against the interests of the United States.”
The WHO has not yet confirmed that the US withdrawal has taken effect.
- ‘Trashed and tarnished’ -
The two US officials said the WHO had “trashed and tarnished” the United States, and had compromised its independence.
“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in a statement.
“As we do with every Member State, WHO has always sought to engage with the United States in good faith.”
The agency strenuously rejected the accusation from Rubio and Kennedy that its Covid response had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures.”
Kennedy also suggested in a video posted to X Friday that the WHO was responsible for “the Americans who died alone in nursing homes (and) the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless mandates” to wear masks and get vaccinated.
The US withdrawal, he insisted, was about “protecting American sovereignty, and putting US public health back in the hands of the American people.”
Tedros warned on X that the statement “contains inaccurate information.”
“Throughout the pandemic, WHO acted quickly, shared all information it had rapidly and transparently with the world, and advised Member States on the basis of the best available evidence,” the agency said.
“WHO recommended the use of masks, vaccines and physical distancing, but at no stage recommended mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns,” it added.
“We supported sovereign governments to make decisions they believed were in the best interests of their people, but the decisions were theirs.”
- Withdrawal ‘raises issues’ -
The row came as Washington struggled to dislodge itself from the WHO, a year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect.
The one-year withdrawal process reached completion on Thursday, but Kennedy and Rubio regretted in their statement that the UN health agency had “not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation.”
WHO has highlighted that when Washington joined the organization in 1948, it reserved the right to withdraw, as long as it gave one year’s notice and had met “its financial obligations to the organization in full for the current fiscal year.”
But Washington has not paid its 2024 or 2025 dues, and is behind around $260 million.
“The notification of withdrawal raises issues,” WHO said Saturday, adding that the topic would be examined during WHO’s Executive Board meeting next month and by the annual World Health Assembly meeting in May.
“We hope the US will return to active participation in WHO in the future,” Tedros said Saturday.
“Meanwhile, WHO remains steadfastly committed to working with all countries in pursuit of its core mission and constitutional mandate: the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right for all people.”
