Editor-DN
New Delhi: While the Indian government has invited the President of Indonesia. Prabhu Subyanto In order to attend the Republic Day celebrations as a chief guest, and an official announcement about his visit is expected any moment, he would not want to combine his visit to India with the President’s proposed visit to Pakistan.
Official sources have maintained for the past several weeks that Subianto will be the guest of honor at the January 26 parade, but no official announcement has yet been made about the visit. Usually, a single announcement is made months in advance.
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Amid this delay in the announcement, reports surfaced in the Pakistani media earlier this week that the President is likely to arrive in Islamabad on January 26 on a 3-day visit. India has in the recent past encouraged foreign leaders not to include Pakistan in their itineraries during their visits to India and strained ties with the two countries.
It is learned that India has taken up the matter diplomatically with Indonesia, hoping to prevent Subianto from traveling directly to Islamabad after the R-Day celebrations. Waiting for the President to fly directly to Islamabad hours after the Indian military parade would be bad optics for India, troubled by its multiple problems with Pakistan, not least cross-border terrorism. Given the relationship. Subianto met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Egypt on the sidelines of a multilateral event in December and pledged to expand economic cooperation between the two countries.
India and Indonesia have traditionally had strong ties, with a shared focus on political sovereignty, economic self-sufficiency and an independent foreign policy. Indonesia has also emerged as India’s largest trading partner in the ASEAN region. During the state visit of then Indonesian President Joko Widodo in 2016, the two countries agreed to establish a security dialogue to develop a comprehensive action plan on security cooperation.
Widodo was in India again in 2018 as the chief guest for the Republic Day parade, along with the leaders of 9 other ASEAN member states. He also went to Pakistan soon after his visit to India. This is the third time that India has invited the President of Indonesia for Republic Day, the first being the opening ceremony in 1950.
