Govt denies hiring Bob Dole as lobbyist

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied on Friday media reports that Jakarta had hired former U.S. Republican Senator Bob Dole as an official lobbyist.

"It's not correct that Bob Dole has been appointed as an Indonesian lobbyist in Washington," ministry spokesman Marty A. Natalegawa said at a media conference in Jakarta.

"The fact is that Bob Dole has expressed his readiness to help Indonesia on a case-by-case basis, but not hired as a lobbyist. There is no type of blanket contract," said Marty.

The Far Eastern Economic Review, in its Feb. 5 edition, reported that Dole had been hired by the Indonesian government to further its interests in Washington.

The magazine quoted a senior U.S. official as saying that Dole had the ear of both Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, and could exercise considerable influence on Capitol Hill.

Marty said that Jakarta considered Dole as one of Indonesia's friends in Washington.

He said for the moment there was nothing that immediately required Dole's involvement.

"But if later, there were things that needed Bob Dole's help, we would certainly seek his assistance," he said.

Dole, who is now a special counsel to a major Washington law firm, ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate against Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election.

Indonesia may require Dole's help in resolving a legal dispute between its state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina and the American power producer Karaha Bodas Company (KBC).

The government canceled KBC's power project in Garut, West Java, in 1998 due to the 1997 financial crisis.

KBC went to an arbitration panel and won the case. The panel ordered Pertamina to pay US$261 million in compensation. Pertamina accepted it had to pay compensation to KBC but differed on the amount payable.

As a result, the U.S. court froze several of Pertamina's bank accounts worth of hundreds of millions of dollars, in the U.S.

Indonesia needs U.S. government help to release its money from the frozen accounts.

U.S. Congress members recently voted against the restoration of a military training program in the United States for Indonesian officers.

Washington has been seeking closer defense ties with Jakarta as part of what it calls its global war on terror.

But it says it cannot resume most of the military links, which were suspended in 1999 over the bloodshed in East Timor, without a full accounting for human rights abuses and a proper inquiry into the killing of two Americans in Papua province in August 2002.