Fed: Lift travel warnings says Indonesia

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Fed: Lift travel warnings says Indonesia

By Joe Hildebrand

SYDNEY, Feb 17 AAP - Indonesia has urged Australia to lift its warnings against peopletravelling to the archipelago, saying a lack of contact between the two cultures couldcreate "misunderstandings".

Indonesia's Tourism Minister Gede Ardika will meet Foreign Minister Alexander Downertomorrow to personally urge him to change Department of Foreign Affairs advice that allnon-essential visits to Indonesia be deferred.

The warnings were instituted after last year's Bali bombings that killed 192 people,mostly Western tourists.

Mr Ardika, who is in Sydney on a tourism drive, said it was vital for Australians tostart visiting Indonesia again, not just for that country's sake but to promote understandingand tolerance between the two cultures.

"We quite understand that it is the duty of a government to advise its citizens tobe careful in travelling," he said.

"(But) if people are not travelling because of this advisory it means people stay athome and ... are not visiting and not seeing each other, and that could create misunderstandingsbetween people.

"If this misunderstanding is happening that means the terrorists won."

Mr Ardika said the Bali bombings were like a deep cut to the island that needed to be healed.

In a sombre joke, he said that particular wound would probably need plastic surgery.

But the minister would not say outright Bali was as safe now as it was before the October12 blast and conceded tourists were still staying away in droves.

However, the arrest of several of the suspects behind the blast and an increased policepresence was maintaining security, he said.

Mr Ardika said there was one policeman per 315 people in Bali compared to one per 1,000across Indonesia as a whole.

"In terms of physical change the beach is still there, the hotels are still there,the people are still there with their friendly smiles," he said.

"What is actually lost is the perception of safety."

Mr Downer today said when it came to travel advisories the government was damned ifit did and damned if it didn't.

"Inevitably in a liberal democracy like this ... there will be allegations levelledat the government whatever we do," he said in Sydney.

"We get allegations that our travel advisories are excessive, that the ratings of ourtravel advisories are too high, and then we get accused of not taking travel advisoriesseriously enough and the ratings of our travel advisories are too low when it comes tosomething like the Bali bombing or other international incidents."

The Indonesian government has installed a four-part recovery plan for the island -rescue, rehabilitation, normalisation and expansion - in an effort to re-establish itas a major tourist destination by the end of 2004.

Mr Ardika said the island was still in its "rehabilitation" phase, which involved improvingproducts and services and offering discounts and other incentives to travellers.

AAP jh/nf/mg/de

KEYWORD: BALI INDON NIGHTLEAD