Alatas ejects Evan's remark on ambassador
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas yesterday discarded his Australian counterpart's calls for an Indonesian ambassador not linked to East Timor as a personal opinion superfluous to Jakarta's prerogative to select a candidate.
"That's his own opinion," Alatas told journalists yesterday when asked to comment on Gareth Evans' desire that Indonesia's next ambassador to Australia have a clean record in regard to East Timor.
"He is free to have such an opinion, but I believe that the decision to select an ambassadorial nominee is up to the country which makes the appointment," Alatas asserted.
Evans was reported earlier to have said that Australia would prefer "someone who hasn't got any kind of track record of either involvement in or support for actions in East Timor or elsewhere that are obviously distasteful."
Evans was also quoted as saying that a civilian would be preferable for the post.
Indonesia withdrew the nomination of retired Army lieutenant general H.B.L. Mantiri in June over a public protest in Australia relating to remarks he made about the 1991 incident in Dili, East Timor. In the incident, security forces killed 50 demonstrators.
Despite having accepted Mantiri's nomination, Evans later demanded he apologize.
Jakarta refused the request and later announced that it was withdrawing Mantiri's nomination and would leave the post in Canberra vacated for an indefinite period.
"Those are his owns expectations, not any sort of formal restrictions," Alatas said when pressed whether Evans' comments would influence Jakarta's selection.
Alatas spoke at his office after receiving a number of documents from historian Des Alwi to help the foreign ministry's efforts to compile a history of Indonesian diplomacy.
The minister also confirmed that an Indonesian flag was burned by a group of demonstrators in Melbourne last week, setting straight earlier confusion whether such an incident took place.
"After the Australian government checked again, they admitted an incident where a flag was burned in Melbourne," he said.
Kangaroo 95
An Indonesian flag was burned by demonstrators protesting Indonesia's participation in the Kangaroo 95 military exercise which began last week.
The foreign ministry's director of information Irawan Abidin stated that Gareth Evans confirmed the incident during a meeting with Alatas in Brunei and said that Indonesia has issued a formal protest through its embassy in Canberra.
Alatas would not say whether Indonesia would follow up the protest by summoning Australian ambassador Alan Taylor, but hinted that the possibility remained open.
"We could protest there (Canberra) or protest here," he said, adding that he still needed time to assess the situation after just returning from the week long meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Brunei.
Despite Alatas' statement, Armed Forces spokesperson Brig. Gen. Soewarno Adiwidjojo continued to insist that the flag burning incident never occurred.
"There was only a reading of a petition by a few anti- Indonesian groups," he said as quoted by Antara yesterday.
Soewarno said he based his assessment on reports from Indonesia's military attache in Canberra and sources in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. (mds)