JAKARTA, Sept 12, 2007 (AFP) - Indonesia will push hard to win cooperation benefits from Australia as part of a free trade deal between the neighbours expected to be negotiated from next April, the trade minister said Wednesday.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australia's Prime Minister John Howard agreed to launch a feasibility study on the deal during a visit by Howard in July.

Trade Minister Mari Pangestu told foreign correspondents here that the leaders' agreement had been "a breakthrough" after she had lobbied her Australian counterpart with no success for some time.

But any arrangement should be linked to capacity building in Indonesia, such as assistance with training, she said.

This was "what we negotiated hard with the Japanese, and we'll do the same with the Australian agreement," she said, referring to Indonesia's first free trade pact signed during a visit by Japan's then-premier Shinzo Abe last month.

Cooperation to build capacity was crucial for developing nations in such deals, she said.

"When you negotiate between a developing and developed nation that's always what a developing country would want, so you can optimise the benefits you're getting," she said.

Zero tariffs on fruit, for instance, mean nothing if a country cannot meet strict phytosanitary requirements, while workers may need to speak English, so "this would then be integrated into the cooperation component."

Pangestu also said that Indonesia would probably overall negotiate only a "very limited" number of bilateral trade pacts.

"We think the main game should be multilateral and regional," she said.

The main issue now was no longer tariffs but so-called trade facilitation issues, such as having the certification of professionals wishing to work abroad accepted by trade partners.

"This is going to be the big challenge for us. You must have the institutional framework... This is a very, very big agenda which we are just beginning to address," she said.