Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has said he needs time to tackle the forest-burning which creates a haze every year over South East Asia.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Mr Widodo said Indonesians were also victims of the haze, but it would take three years for results to be seen from efforts to end the huge annual fires.

He also said Indonesia was open to investment, promising to cut red tape.

And he dismissed criticism he had failed to deliver on election promises.

Illegal fires

Speaking to the BBC Asia Business correspondent Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta, Mr Widodo said the haze was "not a problem that you can solve quickly".

The pollution is caused by people in Indonesia's Sumatra, Kalimantan and Riau regions illegally burning large areas of forest and peat for planting, mostly with lucrative palm oil trees.

It is repeated point of tension between Indonesia and its neighbours every year, often causing air conditions classified as highly hazardous to human health. Earlier this year it was so bad in Riau province a state of emergency was declared.

Singapore and Malaysia have called on Indonesia to do more to address the problem, though Indonesia has often pointed out that some of the companies responsible for the burning are foreign-owned and that their neighbours benefit from cheap palm oil products.

Mr Widodo said Indonesia had "gone to great lengths" to tackle it already, including sending 3,700 soldiers, nearly 8,000 police officers and four water-bombing planes to put out the fires.

It was building water reserves in the forest and canals to get water to the hotspots, he said, while also making progress to enforce laws against forest-burning.

"You will see results soon and in three years we will have solved this," he said.

BBC