US President Barack Obama will travel to Indonesia with his family next month, returning to the country where he spent four years as a child, the White House announced late on Monday.

美国白宫于上周一晚些时候宣布，总统贝拉克·奥巴马将于下月携家人访问印度尼西亚，重回他曾度过四年童年时光的地方。

A picture shows a bronze statue representing a 10-year-old Barack Obama, the US president, holding an Indonesian flag placed there by protestors in Jakarta in 2009.

Obama, who has referred to himself as "America's first Pacific president" because of his birth in Hawaii and his years in Indonesia, will also visit Australia during the trip, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Gibbs said that while in Indonesia, Obama will launch a US-Indonesian partnership¹ aimed at broadening and strengthening ties between the United States and the country that is home to the world's largest Muslim population.

Asked whether Obama, to be accompanied by his wife Michelle and two young daughters Sasha and Malia, would visit childhood haunts（出没，常去的地方） , Gibbs said: "I'd anticipate（预期，期望） that will likely be one of the stops."

Obama's late mother, Ann Dunham, came to Indonesia with her 6-year-old son in the late 1960s to join her second husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro.

Obama recounts（叙述） in his book Dreams From My Father being amazed to find the house they moved into on the outskirts²（市郊，郊区） of Jakarta had a collection of exotic（外来的，异国的） animals including a monkey, birds of paradise（极乐鸟，天堂鸟） , a cockatoo（风头鹦鹉） and several baby crocodiles.

His time in Indonesia was cut short in 1971 when he was sent to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, while his mother stayed with her husband.

Indradjaya Madewa, a friend of Obama's when they attended the same elementary school（小学） , said he hoped the president would visit the school during his visit.

"He remembers me and my family because we were neighbours, as well as classmates," said Madewa, now a 47-year-old businessman.

In Australia, he will mark the 70th anniversary of US-Australian relations and hold talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the global economic recovery, the war in Afghanistan and climate change. In Canberra, Rudd said he hoped the president would address the Australian parliament.