Your Excellency Dr. Bernard  Rudolf  Bot, Honourable Johannes Cornelis van Baalen, Mr. Jacques Zeno Brijl,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to be able to preside over the simple but solemn rites that we are holding today. This is indeed a happy and meaningful event in the annals of the bilateral relations between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of Indonesia.
And it has been a personal pleasure for me to confer on you Mr. Jacques Brijl, Honourable Hans van Baalen and Your Excellency Dr. Bernard Rudolf  Bot the Bintang Mahaputra Utama for the extraordinary services that each of you have rendered to Indonesia.
 
In a very effective and dramatic way you have been promoting Dutch-Indonesian relations and cooperation.
In doing so, you have begun the process of raising the cooperation between our countries to the level of a comprehensive partnership even before the documents for such a partnership are signed.
This award, the highest within the gift of the Indonesian Government to a foreign national, has been conferred on you by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 41 of 2009, signed by President Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in accordance with his constitutional mandate.
The message of this award is simple but deeply heartfelt: it says that you are true friends, great friends of Indonesia.
 
Friends like you are hard to come by, so we are grateful for your friendship and all you have done  out of that friendship.
For instance: nine days ago Indonesia was struck by yet another natural disaster: the earthquake in Padang that killed more than a thousand of our citizens and inflicted extensive damage to private and public property. Along with other friends in the international community, the Netherlands rushed in to help the stricken survivors. Not only the Dutch Government was there for us but also the Dutch NGOs.
And one person who was there for us, has always been there every time that disaster strikes in Indonesia since more than three decades ago.
 
Mr. Jacques Zeno Brijl, who was born in Mojokerto, Indonesia, and his organization, Holland Horizon, have been providing free basic medical services to Indonesians, particularly in the rural areas and those devastated by natural disasters. Moreover, with his wide networking in Dutch and Indonesian circles, Mr. Brijl has contributed a great deal to the empowerment of Indonesian civil society.
While Mr. Brijl is our friend in Dutch civil society, we also have a friend as true and great in Dutch Parliament, the Honourable Hans van Baalen, who has never ceased to promote bilateral relations between the Netherlands and Indonesia.
 
On the floor of Parliament and in various public forums, he is a passionate supporter of Indonesian territorial integrity and a fierce opponent of every separatist movement in Indonesia. A pillar of the Dutch Liberal Party, he must be credited with the creation of strong support in Dutch Parliament for closer Dutch-Indonesia cooperation and for Indonesian reformasi.
He has visited Indonesia several times and on each occasion I have had the privilege of discussing with him various aspects of our bilateral relations. He envisions that one day the Netherlands will be Indonesia's gateway to Europe, bile Indonesia will be the Netherlands' gateway to Asia. I share that visiom
 
With Dr. Bernard Bot, i share not only a vision but also a profession—the highly demanding profession of diplomacy—and a robust friendship, of which 1 am very proud. He is a
genuine "Anak Betawi" for he was born in
Jakarta when it was still known as Batavia. We worked closely together during his tenure as Foreign Minister of the Netherlands from 2003 to 2007.
I will never forget his visit to Jakarta in August 2005, when he attended a reception I  tendered to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Indonesian independence. In his speech on that occasion he emphasized that his personal attendance at that event was a clear demonstration of the political and moral acceptance by the Dutch Government
of the Prokkanasi of the Independence of Indonesia, which took place on 17 August 1945.
 
it wasn't easy for the Dutch Government to make that decision--but we had within that Government a friend who shared our sense of history. More important, he could persuade his colleagues in government and his constituents to embrace that history.
He was persuasive because his patriotism was beyond question. Like many Dutch veterans of the Second World War, he endured the hardships of a Japanese concentration camp. And he later distinguished himself in the service of his country.
Thus Dr, Bernard Bat helped bring about the completion of a long healing process.
 
Today there are no taboos in our bilateral relations: we Indonesians honour Dutch war heroes, while Dutch veterans join our Independence Day ceremonies.
This new rapport, moreover, has propelled our two countries to a higher plane of cooperation. Our total bilateral trade increased by almost 40 percent last year, to USD 4.52 billion, making the Netherlands one of our biggest trading partners in the European Union. The Netherlands is also the eighth largest foreign investor in Indonesia today.
And I am confident that we will begin implementing a Comprehensive Partnership Agreement (CPA) in the near future.
 
Together with Foreign Minister Verhagen, I initialed the document to that Agreement last January and I look forward to its being signed by our respective Leaders next year.
That partnership will serve us in good stead as both countries face the challenge of a global economic and financial crisis. With it, we can build on our unique complementarities and make them serve the welfare of our peoples. I am sure our partnership will work because there is the force of a strong friendship behind it.
Unlike friendship, economic realities can undergo violent fluctuations. Ideologies flourish and then fade out of fashion. Governments come and go.
 
But a true friend will aiway s be there for you—in the way that Mr. Jacques Zeno Brijl, the Honourable Hans van Baalen and Dr. Bernard Rudolf Bot have always been there for us. The nature of friendship never  changes.
A friendship is precious when you find it in a former adversary. It is priceless when it heals old wounds and moves us to turn one leaf after another, leaving far behind us the dark chapters of our intertwined history. Thus in friendship we move on, enriched by the interpenetration of our respective cultures and by the wisdom derived from painful experience. We move on to a future of splendid possibilities.
 
And so while we gather here today to honour three eminent individuals who are true friends of Indonesia, we also celebrate and move forward a great friendship between a developed and a developing nation. It is a friendship tested by the crucible of history and substantiated by a mutually beneficial comprehensive partnership. As such we can proudly offer it as an exemplar to the rest of the world.
It is a friendship that is indeed fruitful but we also cherish it for its own sweet sake.
I thank you.