Rudd praises Howard for $1b tsunami aid
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Long term partners: Mr Rudd pledged $50 million to boost reconstruction funding in the province. (AFP: Jewel Samad)
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has praised his predecessor John Howard for the former government's aid to Indonesia after the Boxing Day tsunami.
Mr Rudd has been touring Banda Aceh, the provincial capital swamped in 2004, on the final leg of his Asian tour.
The province's Ulee Lheue Islamic School lost all but a dozen of its 300 students.
Today, Mr Rudd and his wife Therese Rain attended the inauguration of the school's replacement, rebuilt with $500,000 of Australian aid money.
"To see the smiles on the young students' faces and to know that they are at a school which we have helped to rebuild and helped to support, it makes every Australian heart glad," he said.
Mr Rudd also promised an extra $50 million in aid to Indonesia, and then singled out his predecessor for Mr Howard's quick response.
"Today I would publicly honour the role played by former prime minister John Howard in his right decision to contribute $1 billion," he said.
"It's very much a practical example which I think speaks to the world at large about what a country like Australia, a Western country, predominantly Christian, can do in partnership with our friends here in Indonesia, the largest Muslim community in the world," he said.
The tsunami obliterated vast areas along the coast, leaving around 170,000 people dead or missing in the province. Many thousands more were killed in other Indian Ocean nations.
Mr Rudd said that it was not only extraordinary how the community had rebuilt but also how the tragedy had been taken as an opportunity to help heal the wounds of years of conflict.
Aceh suffered three decades of fighting between the government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in which 15,000 people died. The conflict ended with the signing of a peace agreement in 2005, months after the tsunami.
Mr Rudd said in Jakarta on Friday that Australia and Indonesia were looking into setting up a regional centre to co-ordinate disaster relief.
- ABC/Reuters
