RI ENDEAVORS TO BUILD NEW CLIMATE CHANGE CONSENSUS: PRESIDENT

Jakarta, Aug 14 (ANTARA) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia continued to play a bridging role and build a new consensus for a climate change regime after 2012.

"Indonesia will continue to play an active role in the handling of global issues, including climate change," the president said in his state-of-the nation address at a plenary session of the House of Representatives (DPR) here on Friday.

Addressing the plenary session held in the framework of Indonesia's independence day anniversary, President Yudhoyono said that in 2007 Indonesia wrote in golden ink of its success in organizing a UN Conference on Climate Change that produced the Bali Road Map.

The head of state said that apart from all efforts made so far, there was no guarantee that in the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen in December 2009 advanced and developing states would be able to achieve a new consensus on climate change after 2012.

But in this case, Indonesia will continue to play a bridging role in order to build a new consensus.

"We have to be successful because this is not in the interest of the Indonesian people alone but also in a the far bigger interest, namely the interest of the future of human beings on earth," the president said.

Yudhoyono said that Indonesia also continued to preserve its rain tropical forests which constituted a world asset in reducing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

He said that basically every nation had its own ideals and strategic vision that it had to attain through hard work.

To express the idea, the president quoted a Buginese proverb, "resopa temmangingi namalomo naletei pammase dewata," which meant that only with persistent hard work would people get a blessing from God.