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| Indonesian Ambassador Nicholas T. Dammen |
By Kim Se-jeong
Staff Reporter
Last Wednesday marked the 50th day in office since Indonesian Ambassador Nicholas T. Dammen arrived in Seoul. The 50 days went by as if they were just five days with never a dull moment, including a visit to Indonesia.
He accompanied President Lee Myung-bak on an official visit to Indonesia in early March.
Twenty heads of state, including Lee and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, also met in London after North Korea's rocket launch on April 5.
He began getting involved with preparation for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that will take place in June on Jeju Island, requiring him to make several trips there.
Indonesia is in election season. The first ballot box opened last Thursday for a general election and will end with a presidential election in July.
Seated with members of the Korea-Indonesia Friendship Association ― comprised of two former Korean ambassadors to Jakarta and Korean business representatives, the ambassador finally took a chance to look back at what's happened in the past 50 days.
Dammen said President Lee's visit to Jakarta couldn't have been more successful.
``They have signed 12 agreements, mainly in the energy sector,'' he said during an interview with The Korea Times.
Ranging from crude oil to forestry commodities, the Southeast Asian nation, composed of more than 17,000 islands, has rich natural resources. Korea, in quite the opposite situation, is one of the largest investors in Indonesia, exploring natural gas and oil in cooperation with Indonesian firms.
He said the agreements would intensify an already solid economic foundation between the two countries.
What he will follow closely is an agreement on forest management, by which Korea will transfer sustainable forest management techniques to Indonesia in exchange of forestry commodities such as plywood.
``I see this cooperation is complimentary to each other. With this cooperation, we can manage it. Now we can cut the trees according to our needs.''
Indonesia has nearly 10 percent of the entire structural basins on earth, the second most after the Amazon basin in Brazil. Yet illegal logging and other human activities have gradually stripped it of forest.
Referring to Korea's Arbor Day in April, Dammen said, ``That's the green growth that Lee is telling us about,'' quickly leading into what his President, Yudhoyono, does as a campaign to promote tree planting.
``Sometimes, the President goes and encourages people to plant trees. We have done that for last couple of years,'' he said.
Getting into his 34th year as a diplomat, the ambassador has a clear vision for future economic cooperation between the two countries.
He has high expectations for Korean investors, who showed commitment to Indonesia during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
``When the crisis hit, foreign firms rushed to leave Indonesia. But Korean companies decided to stay,'' Dammen said in appreciation, and hoped to see the same interest in the recurrence of an economic downturn.
Having worked mainly in the economic sector, the envoy had a unique view on solving the crisis. Although welcoming the $1.1 trillion blueprint for economic recovery agreed by G-20 summit participants, the envoy said the Asian Development Bank should be given better treatment.
``We from Asia want to see Asian Development Bank to be given more power, because we have experienced working with IMF'' during the financial crisis,'' he said.
Before assuming his post in Korea, he had worked in Papua New Guinea, Finland, the U.K., Singapore and Belgium, always in an economic capacity. In Indonesia, he was in charge of the economic integration of ASEAN.
[출처 : 코리아타임스]
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