President Abdurrahman meets Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew

President Abdurrahman meets Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew

JAKARTA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid and former Singapore
prime minister Lee Kuan Yew met for 45 minutes during a stopover
to the island-state late Saturday night, conferring on various
bilateral issues including plans to hold a meeting of the
President's international advisors.

There was scant detail of the closed meeting as it was off-
limits to the media but AP quoted a Singapore foreign affairs
ministry statement which said the two discussed bilateral and
regional issues, including the Indonesian leader's plan to call a
January meeting of his International Advisory Panel.

Abdurrahman has invited a number of international figures,
such as Lee and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
to be part of a team of his personal advisors.

The President stopped in Singapore on his way back from
attending the Asia-Europe Summit Meeting in Seoul. On his way to
South Korea Abdurrahman stopped over in Malaysia to meet with
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

The President and his entourage arrived in Jakarta at about
11:35 p.m.

Indonesian foreign minister Alwi Shihab when asked by
journalists said he could not elaborate much as he was not
directly involved in the discussions.

"I don't know because I was talking to my counterpart, the
Singapore foreign minister," Alwi remarked.

"I was not involved in the discussions between the two
leaders".

Nevertheless, Shihab remarked that there was a possibility
that the closed discussions included the Soeharto case.

On the visit to South Korea, which included bilateral meetings
with several world leaders, Alwi said much of the meetings
focused on ways to forge closer relations with the respective
countries and how to help Indonesia recover from its economic
problems.

Alwi noted that during the meeting with China's Prime Minister
Zhu Rongji, Abdurrahman called on Chinese businessmen to work
with their Indonesian counterparts on the prospect of exporting
chopsticks to China.

The President said that such an enterprise held promise as
almost all of China's population of over 1 billion use
chopsticks.

Abdurrahman also reportedly asked for a special quota for
Indonesian palm oil exports to China.