Australia to join regional antiterror task force

Australia to join regional antiterror task force

Agence France-Presse, Sydney, Australia

Australia has agreed to join a southeast Asian police task force
set up to battle terrorism in the region, the head of the federal
police said on Thursday.

Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Australia was invited to
join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) task
force by the head of Indonesia's national police, Gen. Da'i
Bachtiar in December.

Indonesian police head the task force.

The invitation came as Australian and Indonesian police worked
to track down those behind the October bombing on the resort
island of Bali which killed about 200 people, 89 of them
Australian.

Keelty announced the decision to join the task force ahead of
a meeting with Bachtiar Thursday in Canberra.

Indonesian police have yet to decide how many Australian
police will be involved with the task force. Final arrangements
for the force are expected to be ratified at a meeting of ASEAN
police chiefs in May.

Keelty said one of the force's jobs would be to track down
more of the Islamic militants beyond the Bali bombing.

"There are still suspects outstanding from the Bali bombings
and there's been other bombings in the Philippines this week,"
Keelty said.

"There are connections between some of those groups in the
region and obviously one of the things that General Bachtiar and
I will be talking about is trying first and foremost to deal with
the people responsible for the Bali bombings and then look at the
broader issue of terrorism in our region."

Authorities have blamed the Bali bombing on Jamaah Islamiyah,
a radical Islamic group believed linked to Osama bin-Laden's al-
Qaeda network.