Indonesia's foreign minister Marty Natalegawa warns future cooperation with Australia could be in jeopardy without assurances about spying operations.
I'm not sure what kind of course or relationship there are in term of cause and effect but certainly, in so far as the first question to concerned, the kind of response that we have been obtaining or receiving is the more generic response that neither the government of Australia nor the United States are able to confirm or deny the practices reported in the various media, Marty Natalegawa added.
In the absence of such assurances to the contrary then of course we must assume that such activities are taking place unless we are able to obtain explicit assurance that it is not taking place. At the very least what we need to be ensured is that it will no longer take place in the future. We may not be able to undo the past but we certainly have some control of our future in this connection our hope is that both governments would be able to underscore or make some commitment that they would not be engaged in any activities inconsistent with the friendly relation between our two countries Natalegawa said.
He continued "I was looking at Indonesia-Australia, the various agreements that two countries have committed themselves (to). One of them obviously is agreement to exchange information, exchange even intelligence information, to address issues such as people smuggling for example to disrupt people smuggling, to disrupt terrorist attacks etc."
He says its intelligence cooperation with Australia on people smuggling and terrorism could be reviewed in light of reports Australia has been spying on its largest neighbour.
Indonesia's FM concluded "Now this information flow had been rather effective, very important. We need to look at that. If Australia feels that there are ways of obtaining information other than the official one, then one wonders where we are in term of cooperation"
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