Jakarta: US President Barack Obama will visit
Indonesia next year to "showcase the importance of growing
US-Indonesia bilateral relations", the US embassy said today.
The embassy statement echoed comments from a spokesman
for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who also said 2010 had
been earmarked for Obama`s trip to the world`s most populous
Muslim-majority country.
It said Yudhoyono met Obama on the margins of the Group
of 20 summit in Pittsburgh last month and they "agreed on the
importance of having a visit that would showcase the
importance of growing US-Indonesia bilateral relations.
"After reviewing the possibilities, they agreed that the
best time for such a visit would be some time next year, at a
date to be mutually determined."
The statement ends speculation that Obama would visit
Jakarta in November when he attends his first summit of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in neighbouring
Singapore.
Obama spent part of his childhood in the Indonesian
capital Jakarta in the late 1960s, after his divorced mother
married an Indonesian.
The childhood connection and his knowledge of a few words
of the Indonesian language have made him hugely popular in the
country of 234 million people, 90 per cent of whom are Muslim.
Bureau Report
