JEDDAH, 6 August 2004 — Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri will arrive in Madinah early this morning for a two-day visit to the Kingdom during which she will confer with Saudi leaders on Iraq and other issues, diplomatic sources said here yesterday.
Sukarnoputri, who runs the world’s largest Muslim country, will discuss with her Saudi hosts “Islamic and Arab issues, including the possibility of sending Muslim troops to Iraq” as proposed by Riyadh, the sources said.
The Indonesian leader will head for Makkah today to perform Umrah after visiting the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah.
She is scheduled to hold talks with Saudi leaders in Jeddah tomorrow and depart later in the day, Indonesian diplomats said.
The Kingdom is home to hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers, many of them maids.
Saudi Arabia has proposed sending troops to Iraq to replace US-led multinational forces in the war-torn country. Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal also said on Sunday that troops should be sent only at Baghdad’s request and operate under the auspices of the United Nations.
He discussed the idea of deploying Muslim troops in Iraq with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi when they both visited the Kingdom last week.
The Indonesian Foreign Ministry said last Friday that Jakarta would send troops to Iraq only as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
“We will only consider, we will only contemplate, sending our troops to Iraq if it is under UN framework or UN aegis, in other words as part of a UN peacekeeping force mission, the so-called United Nations blue berets,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa told reporters.
Accordingly Indonesia — which was a strong opponent of the US-led occupation of Iraq — will not contribute to a multinational force, even one sanctioned by the United Nations, Natalegawa said.
Powell has spoken of a Muslim force that would be part of the coalition or a separate body within the coalition framework, possibly to provide security or support to the United Nations. A UN Security Council resolution last month provided for the establishment of a dedicated international force to provide protection for UN staff in Iraq.
