Prabowo says Indonesia willing to send peacekeeping troops to Gaza

Indonesia's president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, said on Saturday that his country was willing to send peacekeeping troops to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza if required.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier security conference, Prabowo said U.S. President Joe Biden's three-phase proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza was a step in the right direction.

"When needed and when requested by the U.N., we are prepared to contribute significant peacekeeping forces to maintain and monitor this prospective ceasefire as well as providing protection and security to all parties and to all sides," Prabowo said.

The 72-year-old former special forces general and current Indonesian defence minister takes on the presidency of the world's most populous Muslim nation in October.

He said President Joko Widodo had instructed him to announce that Indonesia was also ready "to evacuate, to receive and to treat with medical care up to 1,000 patients" from Gaza.

The Indonesia Hospital in Gaza, which was run by an Indonesia NGO, closed in November amid the fighting.

Prabowo said a comprehensive investigation into the humanitarian disaster in the Rafah area of Gaza was needed as well as a "just solution" to the situation in Palestine.

"And that means the rights of not only Israel to exist, but also the rights of the Palestinian people to have their own homeland, their own state, living in peace."

(Reporting by Fanny Potkin and Xingui Kok, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Gerry Doyle)