'FEER': RI hires Dole as lobbyist

'FEER': RI hires Dole as lobbyist

The Indonesian government, in an apparent effort to improve their public relations in Washington D.C., has hired former Republican Senate majority leader Bob Dole as a lobbyist, a news report said on Friday.

"The idea to get Dole on board is believed to have come from Dino Djalal, head of the Indonesian Foreign Ministry's North American desk," said the Far Eastern Economic Review weekly magazine in its Feb. 5, 2004 issue.

The item was in the magazine's sometimes speculative "Intelligence" section.

Dole, who ran unsuccessfully against Bill Clinton as the Republican candidate in the 1996 presidential election, is known to be close to both Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, powerful players in setting the tone of U.S.-Indonesian military-to-military ties.

U.S. congressmen recently voted against the restoration of military relations between the U.S. and Indonesia, which were severed in 1999 in the wake of widespread atrocities committed by pro-Jakarta militias in former Indonesian territory East Timor that year.

Former Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas reportedly told a U.S.-Indonesia Society reception in mid-January that public relations was one of his country's worst failings, a comment which many Indonesia-watchers would agree with.

Dole is currently special counsel to Alston & Bird, a major Washington law firm. --DPA

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GetDPA 1.10 -- JAN 30, 2004 10:07:17