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Indonesia, Russia pledge to boost cooperation

Xinhua, February 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to improve bilateral cooperation on Tuesday in their reciprocal greetings to commemorate 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two nations.

"The commemoration should serve as the momentum for efforts to strengthen and deepen bilateral cooperation between the two countries that has been going well all the time," President Widodo said in his statement.

The Indonesian president said that bilateral ties between Indonesia and Russia has grown stronger, based on the spirits of friendship, equality, respect and understanding to each other.

"Realizing the huge cooperation potentialities, we can improve and bring the ties into higher level, not only bilateral but also in regional and global forums," President Widodo was quoted as saying in the statement released by Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Russia was established in Feb. 3, 1950 when the latter was still formed as Soviet Union.

In his official greeting statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that based on a good tradition, Russia and Indonesia has actively developed their relations into new sectors affirmed by meetings between President Putin and his Indonesian counterpart in Beijing APEC event.

"I am underlining our readiness to continue constructive cooperation so as to improve bilateral relations. It would answer respective interests of Indonesia and Russia in securing stability and security in Asia and the Pacific," Putin said in the statement.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov also shared their greeting upon the event. They both were expecting closer relations between the two nations.

Indonesian and Russian government has set a two-way bilateral trade target up to 5 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. Bilateral trade between the two countries was recorded at 2.17 billion U.S. dollars in 2011.

Commodities exported by Russia to Indonesia included fertilizer, energy and aviation components and metals. Meanwhile, Indonesia's exports to Russia comprised of food and agriculture commodities, among others fats and palm oil, coffee, tea and cacao. Besides that Indonesia also exports footwear, electronics and rubber goods to Russia.

The two nations also cooperated in extensive sectors such as infrastructure, aviation, defense, education, tourism and investment. Endi