The Asean Summit, The Foreign Policy Highlight

MR. (RIP) Ali Alatas as the Foreign Minister of Indonesia from March 1998  to October 1999 had said, "The foreign policy of a country is inevitably shaped by the confluence of a number of interelated factors, both objective and subjective, including the country national interest as perceived within a given time frame, its geopolitical environment, its national history and especially true in the case of newly independent nations, the unique manner of its ascension into sovereign statehood. Thus, in the case of Indonesia, such factorsas its strategic location bridging two continents and two oceans, its archipelagic configuration, its cultural diversity and sociopolitical complection and its vast and still largely untapped natural and human resources cannot but have a decesive bearing on its outlook on the world". He had said this about twenty five years ago.