"In general, most of our people have already been evacuated. A total of 861 Indonesians have already been evacuated from Libya through Tunisia, and according to latest reports 10 Indonesians are still there," Marty said on the sidelines of an "Updates from The Region" event in Jakarta Wednesday.
The Indonesian government had advised all its citizens to leave Libya and decided to temporarily close its embassy in Tripoli for safety reasons, he said.
"We are now doing the best we can to contact citizens who refuse to leave, mainly a number of college students," he said.
Although the embassy in Tripoli had been closed since Sunday (March 10), it had assigned four of its staffers to keep monitoring the situation in Libya.
"Since last Sunday, the ambassador has been relocated to Tunis, but four of his staffers are still in Libya." Marty said.
Indonesia`s stance on the military actions by the western coalition in Libya focused on two things, protection of civilians and implementation of UN resolution 1973, Marty said.
"At the beginning, the Indonesian government has asked the international community to take concrete actions to protect innocent civilians in Libya, and to pass the UN`s resolution 1973," he said.
Marty emphasized the most important thing was that the resolution must be implemented precisely and with the utmost consideration for civilian lives while Libya`s internal conflict had to be settled by political means. (*)
(T.A050/D016/HAJM/f001)
Editor: Ruslan Burhani
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
