Megawati meets with Singapore leader

Megawati meets with Singapore leader

SINGAPORE (AFP): Indonesian Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri met with Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on Tuesday at the start of a two-day working visit, officials said.

Goh welcomed Megawati, dressed in a checkered skirt and a white blazer draped over a red shirt, at the Istana state complex with a firm handshake, after which they proceeded to a meeting room.

Goh and Megawati warmly greeted each other and were all smiles as photographers took pictures.

A spokesman at the prime minister's office told AFP it was a "private, four-eyes meeting" and no details will be released.

Megawati, who arrived earlier in the day, is also scheduled to meet with influential Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew on Wednesday. Lee was among a panel of international advisers who recently visited Jakarta.

The Indonesian vice president, a daughter of the country's former president Sukarno, will deliver a special address to a forum of top business executives on Wednesday.

Former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Stanley Roth on Tuesday told the same business forum to be addressed by Megawati that the leadership crisis gripping Indonesia was a threat to regional stability.

Roth said he was surprised that President Abdurrahman Wahid did not take the recent cabinet shakeup as an opportunity to forge a coalition and instead installed his loyalists.

"It is now open season for politics in Indonesia," he said.

But the veteran Asian watcher also cautioned against underestimating the Indonesian president's ability to survive, saying that previous predictions on his political future were proven wrong.