"It would be quite improper to give a foreign power a role in the state`s duty to safeguard our national borders," Tjahjo Kumolo, a House of Representatives (DPR) Commission I (foreign affairs) member who is also the party`s secretary general, said here Wednesday.
Tjahjo was commenting on a report that the US had offered Indonesia assistance to enhance security in North Sulawesi waters which border the Philippines.
He said it was true that the state was now not yet able to effectively or fully safeguard the country`s territorial integrity but it could not allow any foreign power to help it in performing the duty.
The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI), Tjahjo said, must be fully sovereign and the government should make the maintenance of complete sovereignty in border regions a top priority as part of its efforts to safeguard NKRI`s territorial integrity.
"Potential threats to Indonesia`s territorial integrity must be quickly addressed," he said.
The PDIP was striving to change the prevailing paradigm that considered border regions and state frontiers as the country`s "backyard" into the opposite view, namely that those regions were actually the country`s "front yard" or NKRI`s "shop window", Tjahjo said.
Therefore, the efforts to safeguard strategic border regions and borders should be dominated by elements of defense to preempt provocations or infiltrations by foreign powers, he said. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
