Obituary: Ali Alatas

By NINIEK KARMINI / AP WRITER

JAKARTA — Former Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, who had the delicate task of representing his country during an often-brutal dictatorship, died Thursday, one week after suffering a stroke. He was 76.

Alatas was the country's top diplomat from 1988 until 1999—the year after longtime President Suharto was swept from power following a wave of massive pro-democracy street protests.

He also served as Indonesia's ambassador to the United Nations, chaired and participated in many international seminars and, most recently, acted as an adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"We have lost a son of the nation, the most excellent diplomat we ever had," Primo Alui Joelianto, a senior Foreign Ministry official, said hours after Alatas passed away at Mount Elizabeth hospital in Singapore.

Friends said they were shocked, noting that he appeared to be regaining strength in recent days.

The well-spoken diplomat is often credited with putting the sprawling archipelago of 235 million people in a good light despite Suharto's autocratic rule _ a job Alatas said was made all the more difficult by a 1991 massacre by troops in the then-province of East Timor.

Hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed in the Santa Cruz assault, sparking an international outcry.

Alatas later described that as a "turning point" in his country's efforts to gain credibility on the world stage. It also may have cost him a job as secretary general of the United Nations, for which he was being considered.

"Those that formerly supported us were shocked," he told Tempo Magazine in 2000.

Alatas continued to play a key role in regional affairs up until his death. He is credited with bringing together feuding factions in war-torn Cambodia in the late 1990s, and as a U.N. special envoy to Myanmar pushed for the release of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

He is survived by his wife and three children.