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Indonesia's president says feeling good

JAKARTA: Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, suffering from flu, said on Saturday he was feeling better and was receiving guests at the palace.

"As usual, I am working," he told reporters, "but not yet in the office because I am still forbidden by the doctors.

"But I am already receiving guests. I am feeling very good."

He took on Thursday and Friday off from work after doctors said he was suffering from the flu, rattling financial markets concerned about Indonesia's political stability.

Wahid said he planned to go ahead with Sunday's scheduled visit to the tiny, oil-rich sultanate of Brunei and to the East Timor capital, Dili, on Tuesday.

Palace officials had said on Thursday the day-trip to Brunei had been cancelled due to Wahid's illness.

In Dili, Wahid will open Indonesia's representative office and meet Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao.

"We will say to him all kind of efforts will be made by Indonesia to help East Timorese to set up a state," Wahid said of the territory which voted overwhelmingly last August for independence from Indonesian rule.

"Secondly, we would like to have cooperation on the border, so the East Timorese people as well as our people can go through the so-called corridor," he said, referring to the border crossing with West Timor.

Wahid said his planned visit to Australia, originally tentatively put down for March, was postponed indefinitely because of timing difficulties.

He was told by doctors to rest on Thursday after he developed a light fever, though the president himself insisted he was fine.

The 59-year-old president is half-blind, has suffered two strokes in recent years and needs help walking.

But since winning power in October, Wahid has kept up a gruelling schedule, touring more than 20 countries and frequently travelling around his own country.

Wahid on Saturday also formally ended the appointment of advisers employed by former President B.J. Habibie and scrapped Indonesia's corporate debt recovery team, whose duties have been taken over by the government's bank restructuring agency. -Reuters