RI President Receives Leadership Award from FPA

New York - Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has received a leadership award for his contribution to peace and international cooperation from the Foreign Policy Association (FPA). President Yudhoyono received the medal for the award from FPA President Noel Lateef at a panel discussion of World Leadership Forum at the Pricewaterhouse Coopers building in New York on Wednesday evening. At the panel discussion, the Indonesian head of state conveyed his view that the world today was yet to attain ideal peace conditions after the Cold War. "Even when relations between big countries are stable and cooperative, there is political turmoil that continues to disturb the international system," Yudhoyono said. The Indonesian President then referred to a number of unsettled conflicts, such as those in the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea and the Middle East. He said that the situations in these 3 regions could conflagrate and therefore, hatred and bigotry, and intolerance and extremism should be dealt with in a proper manner. Yudhoyono noted that one of the great challenges to world peace was the accommodation of emerging powers in the 21st century's international system. Other speakers in the panel discussion besides President Yudhoyono were George Soros of the Open Society Foundation, Kishore Mahbubani of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, UN special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, while the moderator was Donald K Emerson, Stanford University director for Southeast Asia Forum. (*)