Indonesia's Yudhoyono may visit 2 Koreas in mid-2007

JAKARTA, Jan. 26 Kyodo

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono may visit North and South Korea in mid-2007 after the test-firing of missiles by North Korea forced him to cancel his planned visit to the two Koreas last year, a Cabinet minister said Friday.

''There will be a possible package of visits (of Yudhoyono) to South Korea and North Korea in the middle of this year,'' Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in a hearing with a House of Representatives commission dealing with foreign affairs.

He later told reporters Indonesian officials have met their counterparts from North and South Korea to discuss the possible visits and Jakarta is waiting for confirmation from the two countries.

Yudhoyono was scheduled to visit the two Koreas in July last year, but the trips were postponed due to the tension caused by North Korea's missile launches the same month.

The Indonesian government has repeatedly called on all concerned parties -- the countries involved in the six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear programs -- to use dialogue to prevent the situation on the Korean Peninsula from getting worse.

The multilateral talks aimed at persuading North Korea to drop its nuclear ambitions were last held in Beijing in December but ended without a breakthrough due to a standoff between North Korea and the United States over U.S. financial restrictions imposed on a Macao-based bank suspected of laundering money and circulating counterfeit money for North Korea.

The six-way talks also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Yudhoyono has instructed Wirajuda to closely monitor the situation on the Korean Peninsula and keep in close contact with the countries in the talks.

Indonesia has maintained a strong relationship with North Korea since the era of Indonesia's founding father and first President Sukarno and the late North Korea leader Kim Il Sung, father of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's current top leader.

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