Obama in return to his childhood home

JAKARTA, Tuesday

US President Barack Obama finally made a much-delayed return to his boyhood home of Indonesia today, seeking to engage Muslims and cement strategic relations on the second leg of his Asia tour.

Obama arrived in Jakarta under stormy skies on Air Force One from India, as his nine-day Asian odyssey took him from the world’s largest democracy to its most populous Muslim-majority nation.

The president spent four years in Indonesia as a boy with his late mother, but he will have little time for tourism on the 24-hour visit which will focus on improving ties with the Muslim world and courting opportunities for US companies.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that volcanic ash spewing from Mount Merapi in central Java could force Obama to make the whirlwind trip even shorter, but said a speech scheduled for Wednesday would still take place.

Late today, the White House said Obama would compress his schedule on the second day of his trip.

Jakarta was a leafy backwater still dotted with rice paddies when Obama last set foot in the city 39 years ago. Now it is traffic-snarled metropolis whose population swells up to 20 million people with its daily intake of commuters.

But Obama’s old schoolmates say they clearly remember the chubby boy they called “Barry”.

“I believe that he still remembers us although we haven’t met for about forty years,” one classmate, Sonni Gondokusumo, 49, told AFP.

President Obama showed off some of his Indonesian language skills when he asked Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa “apa kabar?”, or “how are you?”, as he greeted officials at the airport.

As lightning forked across the sky, his motorcade cut a swathe through Jakarta’s notorious traffic as he headed to the palace and into talks with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, expected to focus on security and economic issues.

“It’s great to be here. It’s wonderful to see you all,” Mr Obama told assembled dignitaries, before entering the palace where he sat to sign a visitor’s book.

Security has been beefed up in a country that has fallen victim to a number of deadly terror attacks in recent years, with about 8,500 security personnel, including the military, deployed in strategic locations across Jakarta.

President Obama told reporters: “It’s wonderful to be here although I have to tell you that when you visit a place that you spent time in as a child, as the president it’s a little disorientating.”

“The landscape has changed completely, when I first came here it was in 1967 and people were on becaks... a bicycle rickshaw thing.

“Now as president I can’t even see any traffic because they block off all the streets, although my understanding is that Jakarta traffic is very tough.”

Speaking at press conference alongside Mr Yudhoyono after the meeting, he said he had “great affection for the people” of the mainly Muslim Southeast Asian country.

“Obviously I have a sister who is half Indonesian, my mother lived and worked here for a long time, so the sights and the sounds and the memories all feel very familiar,” he said.

He said many Americans had heard of the resort island of Bali but would not be able locate Indonesia on a map. (AFP)