Reaching out to the world’s most populous Muslim nation and the boyhood home of her boss, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Indonesia on Wednesday, saying she wanted to pay tribute to its hard-won democracy.
“Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the last 10 years,” she said, hearkening to the Asian financial crisis of 1998, which triggered the ouster of the autocratic regime of President Suharto.
Mrs. Clinton said that her decision to come here — a 3,600-mile detour from her tour of Japan, South Korea, and China — was also driven by a desire to recognize Southeast Asia, a region that senior Obama administration officials said had been neglected by the Bush White House.