JAKARTA, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia expands the cooperation with foreign countries in the operation to extinguish raging forest fire at home with China, Japan, Russia, and Thailand have pledged eagerness to partake, an Indonesian minister said here on Monday.
Speaking in a press conference here, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that her ministry is also intensively conducting contacts with Australia, Russia and Japan regarding the operation.
She said an Australian Hercules jet, that has a capacity to carry 15,000 liters of water, was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday and expected to immediately join the operation.
Retno said Russia offered two water bombing planes which can carry dozens of liter of water for water bombing operation in the affected areas.
Aside from Australia and Russia, Japan would send fire extinguisher chemical substances which are expected to swift the fire extinguishing process.
The minister said while the sending of foreign assistance from Australia, Russia and Japan were being organized, her ministry is conducting talks about assistance offers from China and Thailand.
Malaysia and Singapore have already sent their water bombing aircraft to join the international operation to extinguish the forest fire in Indonesian province of South Sumatra. Malaysia sent a Bombardier CL 415 plane, while Singapore sent a Chinook helicopter to partake in water bombing operation.
Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security, said the parliament has agreed to add some 700 billion rupiah (about 52 million U.S. dollars) to finance the operation to quell the forest fire.
The fund would be managed by Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB). BNPB initially allocated some 385 billion rupiah (about 28.6 million U.S. dollars) to finance the operation jointly conducted with the police, military and volunteers.
The ongoing forest fire gutted some 1.7 million hectares of forest areas in Sumatra and Kalimantan with six provinces identified of severely affected by impacts of the forest fire.
Haze from the forest fire has killed at least 14 people with more than 300,000 suffered from respiratory diseases in those provinces. The haze also disrupts the flights serving cities in the affected provinces and suspended educational processes in schools.
The haze had also expanded to neighbor countries of Singapore and Malaysia, exacerbating air quality in the two neighbors that eventually disrupts activities and events that already been scheduled before.
The forest fire was incited by efforts to open forest areas plantations ran by palm oil and pulp and paper firms. The land opening was simply conducted by torching fire onto trees and vegetation in the forest.
