SINCE August 1963 Singaporeans and Malaysians had been denied access to visit Indonesia.
While staying in a Bangkok hotel en route back to Singapore from London, Wee Kim Wee chanced to meet a former Indonesian commissioner to Singapore, whose cheerful greeting encouraged Wee to ask whether he might be granted a visa to visit Indonesia.
This suggestion was greeted with some surprise, but a few days later Wee received a message telling him he could have an interview with Foreign Minister Adam Malik but should travel via Bangkok and not direct from Singapore.
There had been been no indication up to that point that the Indonesian leaders were softening on Confrontation, and Wee was amazed when he was told, first by Adam Malik and then in a subsequent interview with General Suharto, that the Indonesian Army wanted to end Confrontation.
Wee hurried back to publish this worldwide scoop, which appeared beneath banner headlines across the front of the Straits Times, quoting Suharto: "PEACE: The sooner the better."
Click to read extracts of the interview
Extract from: Dateline Singapore, 150 years of The Straits Times
Copyright © 1998 Singapore Press Holdings. All Rights Reserved.
