Foreign ministry to help policy in scholar case

DILI, East Timor (JP): Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas said yesterday that his ministry was prepared to assist the police in the criminal prosecution of scholar George Aditjondro, who is seeking permanent residency in Australia.

Speaking to reporters in Dili at the end of a three-day visit yesterday, Alatas did not, however, stipulate what action the foreign ministry would take.

Alatas was in Dili in his capacity as an official of the ruling political group Golkar.

George, a lecturer at Satya Wacana University in Salatiga, Central Java, is wanted for questioning by police for allegedly defaming President Soeharto during a seminar last August.

George has told the Australian media that he will not be responding to the police summons for questioning and would seek permanent residency in Australia. The scholar has been in Australia since February at the invitation of the Asian Research Center at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia.

Alatas said he had already asked the Indonesian embassy in Australia to check the reports that George is seeking a permanent residence.

One means of seeking George's return to Indonesia would be a request to the Australian authorities on the basis of an extradition treaty signed by the two countries only last year.

However, Alatas said he was not sure that the treaty covered a case such as George's. He said the extradition treaty generally applied to cases in which a person had committed a criminal act recognized by the law in each country.

Furthermore, he said, George was only at the point of being summoned for police investigation. (yac/mds)