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US President Barack Obama will travel to Indonesia with his family next
month, returning to the country where he spent four years as a child, the White
House announced late on Monday.
Obama, who has referred to himself as "America's first Pacific president"
because of his birth in Hawaii and his years in Indonesia, will also visit
Australia during the trip, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Gibbs said that while in Indonesia, Obama will launch a US-Indonesian
partnership aimed at broadening and strengthening ties between the United States
and the country that is home to the world's largest Muslim population.
Asked whether Obama, to be accompanied by his wife Michelle and two young
daughters Sasha and Malia, would visit childhood haunts, Gibbs said: "I'd
anticipate that will likely be one of the stops."
Obama's late mother, Ann Dunham, came to Indonesia with her 6-year-old son
in the late 1960s to join her second husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo
Soetoro.
Obama recounts in his book Dreams From My Father being amazed to find the
house they moved into on the outskirts of Jakarta had a collection of exotic
animals including a monkey, birds of paradise, a cockatoo and several baby
crocodiles.
His time in Indonesia was cut short in 1971 when he was sent to Hawaii to
live with his grandparents, while his mother stayed with her husband.
Indradjaya Madewa, a friend of Obama's when they attended the same
elementary school, said he hoped the president would visit the school during his
visit.
"He remembers me and my family because we were neighbours, as well as
classmates," said Madewa, now a 47-year-old businessman.
In Australia, he will mark the 70th anniversary of US-Australian relations
and hold talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the global economic recovery,
the war in Afghanistan and climate change. In Canberra, Rudd said he hoped the
president would address the Australian parliament.
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发表于 2016-7-10 17:42:34