JAKARTA, Oct 20: US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Indonesia for Joko Widodo’s presidential inauguration today, seeking more help from Southeast Asian leaders in the US-led effort against Islamic State in the Middle East.
In a one-day stop in Jakarta, capital of a country with the world’s largest Muslim population, Kerry plans bilateral meetings with Widodo, the prime ministers of neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, the Sultan of Brunei, Australia’s prime minister and the foreign minister of the Philippines. Senior officials of the US State Department said the talks would touch on territorial disputes in the South China Sea, where China’s increasing assertiveness is a worry to the United States and its Asian allies and partners, the fight to contain Ebola, and a Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership under negotiation.
But the priority would be to seek more help in the US-led fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the officials, who declined to be identified, told reporters on Kerry’s flight to Jakarta.
The discussions would cover ways to block Islamic State recruitment of fighters from Southeast Asia, preventing the return of hardened fighters to the region, and blocking militant financing, one of the officials said. “The secretary will talk through areas where we believe and hope individual countries can do more,” he said. While Indonesian crackdowns after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, and an attack on the holiday island of Bali the following year, have weakened and dispersed militants at home, a growing number of them have left the country, and Malaysia, to join Islamic State in the Middle East.
A second US official said Kerry would urge Widodo to do more to freeze the assets of militants in line with UN Financial Action Task Force requirements. (AGENCIES)
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