The bilateral discussion took place between Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa and Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Ilyas Umakhanov.
"Indonesia and Russia have already been in a partnership relationship for 61 years and now there are many opportunities to substantiate the existing relations," Marty said here Friday.
At the bilateral meeting, the two officials exchanged views about APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) as Russia would be the forum`s chair in 2012 and pass it on to Indonesia in 2013.
"We need good cooperation on the APEC chairmanship," Marty said.
Marty and Ilyas also discussed a plan to open a direct flight route between Russia and Bali to meet the need of an increasing number of Russian tourists who visit Indonesia`s famous resort island every year.
The rising number of Russian tourists visiting Bali needed to be responded to by the opening of a direct route between Russia and Bali.
According to avaialble records, a total of 25,595 Russian toruists came to Bali in the first three quarters of 2011, an increase of 25.16 percent from the same period in 2010 when the figure was 21.250 tourists.
"So far, there had been no direct scheduled flights from Russia to Bali, only chartered flights. An agreement in the field of air transportation between Indonesia and Russia was signed last year but so far no regular flights exist between Russia and Bali," he said.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
