Moscow [Russia], April 16: Australia's foreign and defence ministers have evaded questions about a possible request from Russia to station its warplanes in Indonesian territory.
Local officials were left scrambling to verify reports on Tuesday that Moscow had sought permission from Jakarta to station military planes at the Manuhua Air Force Base at Biak Numfor, about 1400km from Darwin.
Indonesian officials later confirmed they were "not contemplating any so-called Russian base, or any Russian assets operating out of Indonesian territory", Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Wednesday.
"That was made very clear to us," she told Sky News.
But Senator Wong refused to confirm whether Indonesia disclosed whether a request had been made.
"I'm obviously not going to go into all the discussions we have diplomatically, we don't do that through the media."
Indonesia said the report from defence publication Janes, which claimed Russia asked to base long-range aircraft in the Papua province, was incorrect.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the matter directly, saying there was a lot of fake news around.
Russia had been active in the Indo-Pacific for many years, Senator Wong noted.
Defence Minister Richard Marles spoke with his counterpart on Tuesday and said it was "made it utterly clear to me that reports of a prospect of Russian aircraft operating from Indonesia are completely false and that Indonesia has no intention of doing this whatsoever".
He refused to say whether his counterpart confirmed a request had been made.
"We know Russia is active in the region, we know that they have conversations with people . and I'm not about to go through the details of this in the media," he told Nine's Today Show.
Mr Marles chastised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for falsely claiming Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had publicly announced the request.
Mr Dutton later added "there's commentary I have seen reported from the Indonesian spokesperson, that's obviously come from the administration" when asked if he had jumped the gun.
Liberal campaign spokesman James Paterson side-stepped questions about whether Mr Dutton needed to be more careful when discussing international leaders.
"Peter was referring to media reports in a breaking news story," he told ABC radio, adding it was entirely appropriate for him to respond to major stories during an election campaign.
Senator Paterson said the opposition had sought a briefing, adding that Indonesia's clarification was welcome.
"(But) it does appear (the government) only learned about this from media reports and had to quickly scramble to make a call to find out whether those media reports are true or not," he said.
"Now, if you have a good bilateral relationship with one of our closest and most important regional partners and if you have good intelligence then things like this should not come as a surprise to the Australian government."
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
