The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Jakarta

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Friday promised a "new phase of cooperation" with Indonesia on disaster response and the environment during his first state visit to Jakarta.

Rudd praised the "very strong friendship" between the two neighbours after he met President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and senior ministers at the presidential palace.

"Australia and Indonesia are neighbours through geographic circumstance but we are friends through active national choice, and this is a very good friendship," he told reporters after the talks. He said the countries had agreed to broaden cooperation over nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change and disaster response.

The recent natural catastrophes in Myanmar, which was devastated by a cyclone in May, and quake-hit China underscored the need for a regional disaster response mechanism, he said.

"Indonesia has experienced the tsunami, the people of Burma (Myanmar) the terrible impact of the cyclone, the people of western China the earthquake most recently," he said.

"We do not know where a natural disaster will hit but between us we believe we can take a good and strong proposal" for a regional disaster-response system to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting next year, Rudd said.

The two leaders also discussed Rudd's plans for an EU-style Asia-Pacific Community to be set up by 2020 and to include the major economies of India, China, India and the United States.

He said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had provided a model of regional cooperation which could be expanded.

It was Rudd's first state visit to Indonesia since he defeated conservative prime minister John Howard in elections in November.