[asia-apec 755] G&M: Suharto was key to PM's foreign strategy

[Sharon R.A. Scharfe]

THE GLOBE AND MAIL
APEC SUMMIT FALLOUT
MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1998

Suharto was seen as key to PM's foreign strategy
Looming Asian economic crisis heightened import of APEC summit

PAUL KNOX
The Globe and Mail

	Canada's relationship with former Indonesian President Suharto began as a
diplomatic courtship dance, blossomed into a love affair, then became a
solid marriage based on political and economic interests.
	Near the end, like a bickering couple, they were negotiating over a social
engagement - last November's controversial Asia Pacific Economic
Co-operation summit in Vancouver.
	But they weren't talking divorce.  For even in his decadence, the
authoritarian 76-year-old leader remained a key to one of Prime Minister
Jean Chretien's prize foreign-relations strategies:  increasing Canada's
commercial clout in Asia.
	The meeting was taking on even greater importance because of the looming
Asian economic crisis. Mr. Chretien, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and
Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, felt it was imperative to talk to the
Asians, particularly Suharto, whose country's banks were among the first to
wobble.  But Suharto was the only leader threatening to boycott the meeting.  
	That is the backdrop to the inquiry into the pepper-spraying of APEC
protesters that reopens today in Vancouver, focusing on RCMP tactics and the
involvement of Mr. Chretien's office in security planning.
	Documents released to the inquiry suggest that Canadian officials went	to
unusual lengths to get 	Suharto to promise to attend APEC, assuring his
aides repeatedly that demonstrations would be contained.  	
	A no-show by Suharto would have been a major embarrassment for Canadians,
which was staging a year of high-profile APEC-related events.
	"If you don't have a big important country like Indonesia, it's a signal
that APEC doesn't matter," said Andrew Cooper, a political scientist and
specialist in foreign policy at the University of Waterloo.
	Suharto and his aides knew Canada as a generous aid donor and a trading
partner eager to tap Indonesia's vast market and natural resources, as well
as a country whose citizens had strong views on human rights.
	He had endured a temporary estrangement, the suspension of new Canadian aid
funds, after Indonesian troops massacred 270 funeral mourners in East Timor
in December, 1991.
	Suharto, a former Indonesian military commander, assumed power in 1966
after anti-Communist pogroms that killed several hundred thousand people.
	The upheaval focused attention on Indonesia.  The Vietnam war was raging,
and the uncompromising Suharto represented a bulwark against communism in
Southeast Asia.
	There were other reasons for Canadian interest.  Indonesia was rich in
minerals, oil and timber.  It was also a huge potential market -- today it
stands fourth in world population, with 200 million -- and part of a booming
region.
	Suharto came first to Canada in 1975, a visit that was also the subject of
preliminary negotiations.  A glimpse of what went on is contained in
documents released to Sharon Scharfe of the lobby group Parliamentarians for
East Timor, author of  "Complicity: Human Rights and Canadian Foreign Policy".
	At that time, East Timor was still a Portuguese colony, but there were
rumors Indonesia was about to invade it.  In one cable, Canadian diplomats
reported telling the Suharto regime that any "military initiative would, in
our view, have a serious impact on plans for the presidential visit."
	In general, Canada was eager for Suharto to come.  The visit went well.
Suharto said he needed locomotives, aircraft, cement and fertilizer plants
and pulp-and-paper equipment, and a $200-million line of credit was
established to allow Indonesia to buy Canadian goods.
	Four months later Indonesia invaded East Timor, touching off an
independence struggle in which hundreds of thousands died.  East Timor was
annexed in August, 1976, but Canada took little note.
	The Mulroney government, which sought in some cases to link aid decisions
and human-rights issues, stopping authorizing new aid projects after the
1991 massacre, a suspension lifted in 1995.
	Canada's energetic anti-Suharto protesters couldn't stop the trade deals,
but Ottawa did seek to address human-rights concerns.  It stepped up
monitoring, aided operations of the Indonesian Human Rights Commission and
got Suharto to allow a Canadian doctor to examine an ailing labour leader in
jail.

-- With report from Jeff Sallot.



	

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  For more information on Parliamentarians for East Timor, Please Contact:      
  Sharon Scharfe, International Secretariat                                     
  Parliamentarians for East Timor                                               
  Suite 116, 5929-L Jeanne D'Arc Blvd., Orleans, ON  K1C 7K2  CANADA            
  Fax: 1-613-834-2021                                                           
  E-Mail:  pet at web.net

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