Ex-foreign minister for Indonesia

Ali Alatas, 76, the former Indonesian foreign minister who had the delicate task of representing his country during an often-brutal dictatorship and was once in the running to head the United Nations, died Thursday at Mount Elizabeth hospital in Singapore, one week after suffering a stroke.

Alatas was the nation’s top diplomat from 1988 until 1999, the year after longtime President Suharto was swept from power after a wave of massive pro-democracy street protests.

Alatas twice served as Indonesia’s ambassador to the United Nations, chaired and participated in many international seminars and, most recently, acted as an advisor to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Although he was well-respected, Alatas’ legacy was tainted by atrocities carried out during Indonesia’s 24-year occupation of East Timor, which ended in 1999, most notably a massacre by troops in the Santa Cruz district that left hundreds of civilians dead.

The 1991 attack -- captured on video by a British filmmaker -- marked a turning point in efforts to put the sprawling archipelago of 235 million people in a good light, Alatas told Tempo Magazine in 2000, saying that even “countries that formerly supported us were shocked.”

The bloodshed also may have cost Alatas a job as secretary-general of the United Nations, for which he was considered in the late 1990s.

Alatas was born Nov. 4, 1932, into a prominent Arab-Indonesian family in Jakarta.

He learned to speak Dutch, German, French and English and graduated from the Foreign Service Academy before earning a law degree at the University of Indonesia.