`Time' magazine returns next week

JAKARTA (JP): The U.S. publication Time magazine will reach its readers in Indonesia again next week after being absent for the past three weeks, the magazine's local distributor announced yesterday.

Iwan Wijaya, general manager of PT Gunung Agung, the magazine's sole distributor for the country said that Time's distribution had been halted because of problems with the publisher's representative in Hong Kong.

"Now everything has been settled and subscribers should receive their magazine again on Monday," Iwan told The Jakarta Post by phone.

He said the absence of the Time's July 11, July 18 and July 25 editions had nothing to do with the contents as some had speculated.

"It's purely a business matter," he said, emphasizing that the publisher's representatives and his office had conducted intense negotiations to resolve the problem.

Subscribers in Indonesia will not receive the three missing editions, and instead they will receive three additional editions at the end of the subscription, Iwan said.

Regarding the July 11 edition, which reportedly carried an article on Indonesia about street protests against the closure of Detik, Tempo and Editor magazines, Iwan said the distributor knew nothing about this.

The edition was never sent by Time's printing company in Singapore, he said. "How can we know about the contents when the edition was never sent to us."

Even the Ministry of Information, from which the distributor often receive directives, did not obtain a copy of that edition.

Time magazine has a circulation of around 12,000 copies in Indonesia with PT Gunung Agung serving as the distributor since the late 1970s. (par)