Joko too busy to chat to PM: ambassador

The Indonesian ambassador has hosed down suggestions his president is snubbing Tony Abbott by refusing to return a call from the prime minister about two Australians on death row.

Nadjib Riphat Kesoema says President Joko Widodo has been very busy visiting the provinces.

The two leaders last spoke in February when Mr Abbott asked the president to reconsider the fate awaiting convicted drug runners Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Mr Abbott has since requested a second conversation.

Mr Kesoema dismissed speculation that if the pair are executed Australia might retaliate by cutting some of the $500 million in aid it gives Indonesia each year.

"We don't see it as retaliation," he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.

"We never ask you for money, so if you give (it to us) we thank you so much because you help our people."

Mr Kesoema is confident the sensitive issue won't damage relations between Canberra and Jakarta.

But, in light of reports 15 asylum seekers spent three days on Christmas Island before being turned back to Indonesia in a fishing boat this week, he called for dialogue rather than unilateral moves.

Earlier Mr Kesoema lamented a "deficit of strategic trust" over maritime boundaries in the south and east China seas - areas of territorial tensions between China and its neighbours.

But he questioned whether it amounted to a new Cold War as some observers have suggested.

"It's concerning to see the way some countries approach the rivalry ... (which) might contribute to the increasing tension," he told a leadership conference in Canberra.

Indonesia wanted the seas to be a uniting factor, from a "theatre of conflict to a theatre of co-operation".