Webb MacKinley, the editor of the world news desk to which I was assigned, asked me to act on Swinton’s call. Swinton, the consummate correspondent, covered Indonesia in 1946-1947 in its years of struggle after proclaiming independence. He had gotten to know revolutionaries who had dealt with the foreign press, like Soedjatmoko and Soedarpo Sastrosatomo. He even had a wayang (shadow puppet) adorning his office wall, a gift from newspaper magnate BM Diah.

As I was the only ASEAN reporter at AP’s Rockefeller Center main office in New York, it was easy for MacKinley to pick me out. The man to interview was Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, Indonesia’s foreign minister at the time.

I was at America’s lead news agency for a four-month attachment program. I was a reporter of the KNI News Service, a domestic news agency that distributed AP news in Indonesia.  A Ford Foundation grant allowed me a US$700 monthly stipend.   

By coincidence, on the Sunday before Swinton’s ASEAN reception, I had met with Mochtar at the four-story neoclassic Indonesian consulate general at 5 East 68^th Street where he had a house-warming with the Indonesian community.

After the get-together, I asked for an interview. The minister replied he would give time for a joint interview with all Indonesian journalists in New York. After I got my assignment to interview Mochtar, I telephoned Sabam Siagian to join me. He was in Boston as a journalism fellow at Harvard’s reputable Nieman program. Siagian, then a senior editor of the Sinar Harapan afternoon daily, and later to become the first chief editor of The Jakarta Post in 1983, declined. But he encouraged me to go alone.

From the political counselor at Indonesia’s permanent mission at the UN, I learned that Mochtar was staying at the high-end Waldorf Towers in mid-Manhattan until Friday, Oct. 6.

I opted for a door-stop interview at the hotel’s entrance Thursday night.

A little after 11 p.m., a metallic-blue Cadillac stopped before the single revolving door of the entrance. Mochtar emerged alone.

I reintroduced myself as a reporter of the KNI on assignment at the AP and asked the minister’s indulgence for an interview.

Mochtar appeared fatigued. He did not reply as he tried to push one frame of the four-frame revolving door. The door didn’t budge. I had placed my left foot against one frame. The minister melted.

 “Meet me tomorrow at 7.”   

The following morning, Friday, Oct. 6, 1978, I arrived a little before 7 a.m. I requested the receptionist to ring up the minister as I had an appointment. I took the phone and Mochtar invited me to his seventh-floor suite. 

Mochtar himself opened the door of the two-room suite. He then put on a belt for his trousers. He stepped into the pantry and offered me a drink. I replied, “No, thank you”. 

A minute later, there was a knock on the door. I opened it. The floor concierge, a portly gray-haired man stood before the door, not entering the room. He addressed one word to the minister: “Excellency?” 

“Two boiled eggs and The Wall Street Journal,” Mochtar ordered.

“Yes, Excellency,” the concierge replied bowing his head and stepping back.

Without further ado, Mochtar invited me to open the interview.

My question was a major foreign policy issue in Indonesia: restoring diplomatic relations with China. Bilateral relations froze after the Sept. 30, 1965, Movement affair, the attempted coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which had a strong bond with the Communist Party of China.  

Mochtar, a graduate of Yale Law School who had earned his PhD at Chicago in 1966, was already an eminent law professor at Bandung’s Padjadjaran University. He had served as justice minister from 1973 to 1978 and was Indonesia’s representative at UN Conferences on the Law of the Sea. He helped develop Indonesia’s Archipelago Concept that won global recognition. 

My question was a compound political and legal issue. Mochtar explained with liquid clarity free of legalistic jargon that China had to remove two obstacles to normalize diplomatic relations. They concerned the question of overseas Chinese and Beijing’s two-tier policy of distinguishing intergovernmental relations from support for the communist movement in other countries.

On the first point, Mochtar said: “We don’t recognize the so-called overseas Chinese because this would create difficulty in the matter of allegiance.”

The Indonesian government, he said, was making a register of all people in the country of Chinese descent to know for certain how many were Indonesian citizens, Chinese citizens and stateless persons.

“This is important to know because the Indonesian government holds the position that there are only either Indonesian citizens or Chinese citizens and politically, we only recognize the People’s Republic of China,” Mochtar said.     

The other major problem, Mochtar continued, was that “China, according to reports, is not yet willing to abandon its two-tier policy”.

“Based on our experience in 1965, you can certainly understand that Indonesia finds it difficult to accept it,” he said.

China continued to voice support of the banned PKI and it harbored a number of Indonesian communists in Beijing, he added.

Despite the stumbling blocks, Mochtar acknowledged there had been an increase in contact with the Chinese. He said the government had instructed Indonesian diplomatic missions to have contact with Chinese representatives, like accepting invitations to receptions.

Mochtar acknowledged he and fellow ASEAN foreign ministers had received a dinner invitation from then-Chinese foreign minister Huang Hua. On his meeting with Huang, Mochtar said he had “no talks and no exchange of thoughts”.

The interview lasted 30 minutes. AP released the story later that day.

Sino-Indonesian relations were normalized on July 3, 1990.

 ***

The writer is a senior journalist and instructor at Dr Soetomo Press Institute. He interviewed Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, Indonesia’s foreign minister in 1978-1988 for the Associated Press at New York’s Waldorf Towers in 1978. Mochtar died Sunday at the age of 92.