Political donations won't hurt U.S.-RI ties: Envoy
Political donations won't hurt U.S.-RI ties: Envoy
WASHINGTON (AFP): Indonesia's ambassador here expressed hope Tuesday that a recent controversy over large political donations linked to an Indonesian banking family would not spark a backlash against Jakarta.
Arifin Siregar also defended Indonesia's record in East Timor, the former Portuguese colony it annexed 20 years ago, and voiced incredulity at the Nobel peace prize awarded to exiled East Timorese activist Jose Ramos Horta.
"We cannot understand what kind of criteria they used in order to arrive at the choice of Ramos Horta" for the prestigious peace prize, he said, though he praised co-winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo.
Belo and Ramos Horta received their prizes in Oslo on Tuesday, refocusing international scrutiny on Indonesia's integration of the territory.
Siregar stressed that his government had nothing to do with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to the Democratic National Committee by several people linked to Indonesia's billionaire Riady clan, owners of the Lippo Group conglomerate.
He also worried aloud that some U.S. officials might be put off dealing with Indonesia by charges that those contributions -- and several White House visits by family scion James Riady -- may have improperly swayed U.S. policy toward the Southeast Asian country.
"Whether explicit or implicit, some people think that (donations by some Indonesians have) influenced U.S. policy toward Indonesia, which is not true," Siregar told reporters at the National Press club here.
"You could imagine that some administration people would like to take a distance from Indonesia because of the implied or explicit accusation as a consequence of these donations," he said. "We hope that it's not the case, but it could happen."
In the waning days of the U.S. election campaign, Republicans charged that Indonesian-linked donations had afforded improper White House access for Riady and suggested he had swayed President Bill Clinton to alter U.S. Asia policy.
Clinton himself rejected that assertion in a news conference three days after his re-election, and experts here generally agree that Clinton has largely endorsed the Indonesia policy of his predecessor, George Bush.
In his first term, Clinton abandoned 1992 campaign pledges to get tough on human rights abusers and embraced a strategy of "constructive engagement" toward Asian giants China and Indonesia.
Siregar cited "a gradual change in the approach of the U.S. government to Indonesia" -- notably, a less heavy-handed approach to human rights -- and added: "We welcome that very much indeed."
But he said Indonesia had also made concessions on issues such as human rights and worker rights, which along with East Timor are chronic sources of friction with western governments.