Nostromo: Henry and Gus, with Jim Bob too! (fwd)

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 11 Mar 2000 03:42:20
From: tapol@gn.apc.org
Reply-To: "Conference act.indonesia" <indonesia-act@igc.org>
To: Recipients of indonesia-act <indonesia-act@igc.org>
Subject: Nostromo: Henry and Gus, with Jim Bob too!

From: TAPOL <tapol@gn.apc.org>
Subject: Nostromo: Henry and Gus, with Jim Bob too!

HENRY AND GUS - and JIM BOB TOO!
Nostromo Research, 7 March 2000

Henry Kissinger's newfound role as political advisor to Gus Dur is
perhaps more a reflection on the Indonesian president's distasteful
political pragmatism, than on any new role being performed by the former
US Secretary of State. After all, it's not Kissinger who's changing his
colours, or sense of priorities. He's always been a fixer for US
interests, believing the country's commercial and political aspirations
to be virtually synonymous. As one of  his strongst critics, liberal
democrat Congressman Stephen Solarz, put it in 1989 after Kissinger was
accused of endorsing China's brutal massacre of protestors in Tianamen
Square, for personal gain: "Dr Kissinger has always defended oppressive
dictatorships, whether or not he had a financial stake in them"

This is not to minimise the importance of Freeport McMoran and
Britiain's  Rio Tinto (joint shareholders with Indonesian interests in
the huge Grasberg copper-gold mine in Papua) now having one of
Freeport's key directors, and its longstanding chief advisor,  holding
hands with the  leader of the world's fourth largest state, and one of
its  biggest potential  markets. But we mustn't forget that, through his
eponymous consultancy, Kissinger Associates,  the wily doctor has for
fifteen years conscientiously served the interests of around another 20
leading US companies, and a select band of European and Asian
corporations. These include AIG - America's biggest private insurance
underwriter and provider of commercial political risk insurance for
industrial projects (like Freeport-Rio Tinto's Grasberg mine in Papua);
ABB, one of the world's largest engineering contractors for
controversial hydro dams; Union Carbide, the company which killed and
disabled thousands of inhabitants of the Indian city of Bhopal; and
Britain's Midland Bank - before it got taken over by the Chinese HSBC
two years ago.


Kissinger's association with Freeport's chair, the crass and ebullient
James ("Jim Bob") Moffett, goes back  to 1989, when he tried
unsuccessfully to broker a deal for the Louisiana-based oil, gas  and
minerals conglomerate in Burma. This was just after the SLORC military
junta crushed the country's democracy movement. In March 1991 Jim Bob
was flying into Jakarta with Kissinger at his side, to sign the contract
which would allow Freeport to expand  Grasberg into the biggest and most
destructive mine on earth. Not only had the ex-Secretary of State
provided Moffett with an analysis of Indonesia's likely future over the
following twenty years (sic); he was also accompanied on this trip by
former undersecretay of State, William D Rogers, and former US
ambassador to Indonesia, John Holdridge - another old pal, who had
served under Kissinger on the National Security Council.

By the early nineties, Kissinger Associates was raking in more than half
a millon dollars a year from Freeport in consultancy fees and retainers,
in addition to Henry's modest US$30,000 director's compensation for his
service on the company board. Three years ago, the US government agency,
OPIC, withdrew its political risk insurance cover from the Grasberg mine
- on environmental and human rights grounds. At this point Kissinger
earned another fillip from Jim Bob Moffett, when he personally
intervened with OPIC's other customers, urgng them to pressure the
agency into reversing its bold decision Within a year, the agency had
caved in.  But, even if the move had backfired, Kissinger couldn't have
been held liable: locked into his contract with Freeport is a clause
which indemnifies him and holds him "harmless" for any bad advice he may
give.

It's tempting to see "Dr Death" (the unflattering sobriquet Kissinger
was given by student protestors at his prosecution of the US war on
Vietnam) now adopting a similar partisan role for Freeport as Gus Dur's
new political advisor. However, this would be to underestimate not only
Dr K's political skills, but also his ideological "mission": to implant
the values of a US-led free market economy among any national leadership
with which he deals. To this end, he will certainly support the
interests of individual companies which empy him - but they could just
as well be Indonesian, Korean or Chinese, as US-based. While he will
never endorse the further "break up" of Indonesia, he may yet counsel
the speeding up of a grant of autonomy to Papua, accompanied by
increased foreign investment, as the best means of defusing the growing
independence movement there. Nor is it beyond him to persuade his fellow
members on the Freeport board, to modify the company's hitherto
aggressive stance against domestic Indonesian critics and actively
redress the environmental and human rights abuses for which it's been
responsble..

In the short term, Gus Dur may think he's got the better part of the
bargain, by taking on  the world's best known political "fixer". For his
part, Jim Bob Moffett must be chuckling all the way to the bank. In the
longer term, however- and like all passionate idealogues - Kissinger
plays it by his own rules. We can't say we haven't been warned.

copyright: Nostromo Research, March 7 2000

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904   Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh

26 years - and still going strong 
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