President Obama is visiting Indonesia for the first time since he was a boy, when he lived there for several years with his mother and Indonesian step-father and half sister Maya Soetoro-Ng. In the world's largest Muslim country, Obama will be delivering another major speech aimed at the Muslim world, a follow up to his June, 2009 address in Cairo.
At a press conference in Jakarta with Indonesian President Yudhoyono (Wednesday in Indonesia, Tuesday in the U.S.) Obama was asked how he assess his "outreach to the Muslim world at this point in your presidency, particularly in light of some of the controversies back home? And if you could, give us some of your thoughts on what it's like to return here as President of the United States.
Obama reply on his YOUTH IN INDONESIA: Well, I'll take the second question first. I think it's wonderful to be here -- although I have to tell you that when you visit a place that you spent time in as a child, as President it's a little disorienting. First of all, as I said before, the landscape has changed completely. When I first came here it was in 1967 and people were on becaks -- which for those of you who aren't familiar, is sort of a bicycle rickshaw thing. And if they weren't on becaks, they were on bemos, which were -- -- they were sort of like little taxis but you stood in the back and it was very crowded.
And now as President, I can't even see any traffic because they block off all the streets -- although my understanding is that Jakarta traffic is pretty tough. But I feel great affection for the people here. And obviously I have a sister who's half Indonesian. My mother lived and worked here for a long time. And so the sights and the sounds and the memories all feel very familiar. And it's wonderful to be able to come back as President and hopefully contribute to further understanding between the United States and Indonesia.
One of the things that's striking is because it's almost on the exact opposite side of the world, I think not enough Americans know about this great country. And hopefully my visit here will help to promote additional interest and understanding. People have heard of Bali and they've heard of Java, but they don't always know how to locate it on a map back home. And I think that increasing awareness of Indonesia is something I'm very much looking forward to doing.
Obviously this is a short visit. It's a shorter visit than I would like. My hope is, is that we're going to be able to come back and maybe bring the kids and visit some places outside of Jakarta. When you go to -- inland, further into Java, there are just incredible places like Yogya, old ancient temples, and places that I have very fond memories of visiting when I was a kid. I'd love to do that.
Obama on MUSLIM OUTREACH: With respect to outreach to the Muslim world, I think that our efforts have been earnest, sustained. We don't expect that we are going to completely eliminate some of the misunderstandings and mistrust that have developed over a long period of time. But we do think that we're on the right path.
So whether it's our more active communications to press in Muslim countries, or exchange programs in which we're having U.S. scientists and other educators visit Muslim countries, or that entrepreneurship summit that we had in Washington in which we invited young business leaders from Muslim countries all across -- all around the world -- what we're trying to do is to make sure that we are building bridges and expanding our interactions with Muslim countries so that they're not solely focused on security issues.
Because you come to a place like Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim population in the world, but people here have a lot of other interests, other than security -- that security is important, but I want to make sure that we are interacting with a wide range of people on a wide range of issues. And I think by broadening the relationship, it strengthens it, it builds trust, creates more people-to-people contact. That will be good for our security but it will also be good for the larger cause of understanding between the United States and the Muslim world.
So I think it's an incomplete project. We've got a lot more work to do. And it's not going to eliminate some -- or replace some tough dialogue around concrete policy issues. Those are going to continue. There are going to be some policy differences that we can't avoid. But I do think it's helping.
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