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Obama to arrive in Indonesia March 23

Other News Materials 15 March 2010 15:42 (UTC +04:00)
US President Barack Obama is slated to arrive in Indonesia next week for a three-day stay in the world's most populous Muslim nation, officials said Monday.
Obama to arrive in Indonesia March 23

US President Barack Obama is slated to arrive in Indonesia next week for a three-day stay in the world's most populous Muslim nation, officials said Monday.

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said the White House informed the country that Obama would arrive March 23, the online news service Kompas.com reported.

However, Natalegawa was unable to give a detailed schedule for the US president's visit, DPA reported.

Indonesian presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal, meanwhile, said Obama was to stay in Indonesia until March 25.

The White House last week postponed the visit by three days to give Obama more time in Washington to push for health-care reform.

"Obama's schedule for a three-day stay has not changed and is not reduced despite the adjustment," local media quoted Djalal as saying.

During his stay in Indonesia, Obama was expected to visit the Besuki 01 school in Menteng in central Jakarta, which he attended for four years.

Obama lived in central Jakarta from 1967 to 1971 from the ages of 6 to 10 after his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro.

Ahead of his arrival, several thousand people held demonstrations in several Indonesian cities Sunday, media reports said.

Some critics in the predominantly Muslim Indonesian population accuse the United States of having an anti-Islam foreign policy.

The Islamist group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia was also planning a large rally Friday in Jakarta, the reports said.

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