OBAMA'S CONGRATS TO YUDHOYONO NORMAL THING :OBAMA'S CONGRATS TO YUDHOYONO NORMAL THING : OBSERVER

Jakarta, July 16 (ANTARA) - The fact that US President Barack Obama has congratulated President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the latter's reelection is a normal thing, an international relations observer said.

"I think it is a common and normal thing, a matter of international etiquette, for the leader of one country to congratulate the leader of another country on his or her success in a certain matter," Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an international relations observer at the Habibie Research Center, said here on Thursday.

She said Obama's congratulations to Yudhoyono should not be construed as an individual matter because had Megawati Soekarnoputri or Jusuf Kalla won the July 8 presidential election, she or he would have received the same greeting.

"Obama's greeting to Yudhoyono on his victory in a free and democratic election without violence is something normal. It would not have been conveyed if Yudhoyono had won through a coup d'etat," Dewi Fortuna said.

Meanwhile presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal said here on Wednesday that US President Obama in a White House press stateent has congratulated Yudhoyono on his recent election victory.

But Djalal added that there had yet to be a direct communication over the telephone between President Obama and President Yudhoyono.

"President Obama congratulated Yudhoyono in a special press statement which was released by the White House but so far there has been no direct congratulation from the US president to Yudhoyono through a telephone conversation," Patti Djalal said.

But he said he was certain Obama would directly congratulate Yudhoyono on his winning last Wednesday's presidential election in Indonesia, aside from the press statement because a White House official had contacted Indonesia for that purpose.

According to Patti Djalal, Obama said in the White House press statement that Yudhoyono's victory in Wednesday's presidential election had a good impression in the democratic festivity in Indonesian on July 8, 2009.

Besides congratulating Yudhoyono on his election victory, the US president also expressed his expectation that with Yudhoyono's next government, cooperative relations between Indonesia and the United States would be further strengthened.