Thorny period in Indonesia-Singapore relations is over: Marzuki

By Budiman Moerdijat

JAKARTA (JP): Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, after a meeting with Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, said that the thorny period between the two countries which erupted last month had been overcome.

"I think the issue has been overcome and there is no need to revisit the problem," Marzuki told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Marzuki met with Singapore's two most prominent figures on Friday during a weekend visit to the island-state.

But he played down speculation that his visit was a peacemaking mission following President Abdurrahman Wahid's outburst last month when he claimed that Singapore had done nothing but take advantage of Indonesia.

"No, this has already been done by Pak Alwi Shihab in Laos, so I did not want to usurp the mandate of the foreign minister," Marzuki said referring to an earlier meeting between Alwi and his Singaporean counterpart S. Jayakumar on the sidelines of the ASEAN-EU meeting in Vientiane last week.

"The main purpose (of my visit) was actually to visit Singaporean President (Sellapan Ramanathan) Nathan ... but being in Singapore has made it possible for me to also meet with the PM (Goh) and SM Lee," Marzuki added.

Marzuki described his meeting with SM Lee and PM Goh as "very useful" and said that during the talks neither mentioned Abdurrahman's scathing attack on Singapore at the end of the informal ASEAN summit which Singapore hosted last month.

Singapore's Sunday Times also quoted Marzuki as saying that bilateral ties appeared to be back to normal.

The newspaper also quoted Marzuki as saying that Goh and Lee were keen for Singaporeans to invest in Indonesia and that there seemed to be no traces of resentment during Friday's meeting.

Ties between the two countries were strained after Abdurrahman accused Lee of being contemptuous of Malays and said Singapore only cared about profit and not its neighbors.

The Indonesian President also criticized Lee for opposing the entry of Indonesia's eastern neighbors Papua New Guinea and East Timor into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Forum

In a telephone interview with the Post, Marzuki said that while he did not go into Abdurrahman's remarks, "I did try to explain Gus Dur's concept of the West Pacific Forum".

"This is not an area that I myself am intimate with, but there were some questions on this matter, so I just told them what I knew about the forum and didn't go into depth," Marzuki said.

In an apparent reaction to an alleged rejection of the proposal to admit Papua New Guinea and East Timor into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Abdurrahman said he would set up a new multilateral grouping, called the West Pacific Forum, consisting of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Indonesia and, possibly, the Philippines.

Marzuki said that during his talks with Lee and Goh, he was "more interested in how the people in Singapore look at the situation unfolding in Jakarta and Indonesia."

"I also helped clarify several points about Aceh and Irian, but I think they are very well versed on the situation in Jakarta," Marzuki said.

He also said that he had a discussion with both leaders on "the perception of the role of Singaporean investment in Indonesia.

"I think it is not widely known that there is a dilemma here (in Singapore) that if Singapore were to go in with investment on a massive scale it would create a backlash of local business sentiment against foreign buyouts. On the other hand, we want Singapore to invest as much as possible," he said.

Marzuki said the matter "is an ongoing problem which has not yet been resolved".

Marzuki added that his visit to Singapore was also for the purpose of attending a discussion on legal reform and political development in Indonesia, held by Singapore's Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies think-tank.