Indonesia gets more focused on al-Qaeda threat: U.S. envoy

Indonesia gets more focused on al-Qaeda threat: U.S. envoy

Jerry Norton and Dean Yates, Reuters, Jakarta

Indonesia is increasingly serious about confronting apparent efforts by al-Qaeda to establish a terrorist beachhead in the world's most populous Muslim nation, the U.S. ambassador to Jakarta said on Tuesday.

"My impression is they are increasingly engaged, increasingly serious and certainly stepping up to the possibility," Ralph Boyce told Reuters.

He had been asked about Indonesian efforts to go after operatives of al-Qaeda, the network Washington blames for the September 11 attacks on American cities.

Asked to classify al-Qaeda activity in Indonesia, he said: "This apparent effort by al-Qaeda, I guess to establish a beachhead, is one way you could characterize it."

Boyce said that "a tiny fraction" of Indonesians professing radical Islamic beliefs might conceivably be linked to al-Qaeda.

But he stressed that despite recent revelations about such activity attributed to Omar al-Faruq, an Arab arrested in Indonesia in June and turned over to U.S. authorities, Washington did not view Indonesia as a hotbed of terrorist activity.

"Quite the contrary, (Indonesian Islam is) probably among... the most moderate, open, tolerant anywhere in the world," said Boyce, who in his year in the post has frequently met Muslim leaders including the more militant groups.

Officials in some neighboring countries have said Indonesia has played down the regional terrorist threat and been reluctant to go after individuals, especially Indonesian nationals, linked by their intelligence agencies to terrorism.

While Boyce has not made that criticism, he did say that when al-Faruq's charges -- which described efforts in Indonesia over several years to carry out terrorist activity -- first surfaced, there was an initial tendency "in the press, in the public and even some elements in the government...that sort of said 'how dare these charges be levied against Indonesia?'."

"My sense is that there is a very healthy shift to addressing the report and the charges themselves" and whether or not they are accurate, he said.

At the same time he rejected accusations, made by some moderates as well as militants, that the U.S. government had leaked details of a Central Intelligence Agency report on al- Faruq's comments to Time magazine as a propaganda trick.

"The idea that somehow we would have provided that information to Time escapes me as to what our motive would possibly have been. The last thing we wanted to appear to be doing was pressuring Indonesia and that's what the Time magazine article immediately unleashed in terms of the public reaction."

"Our concern is that information be provided to the Indonesian authorities and that they take whatever action they deem appropriate. The Time magazine article did not help that at all," Boyce said.

Asked if the leak to Time might have come from Indonesian sources, he said: "Possibly."

Indonesian ministers and officials have often seemed to sing from different sheets on the terrorism issue, with intelligence, security and military agencies most inclined to talk about threats and press for strong action.

Keeping some other officials and politicians from a tough line is fear of a backlash from the 85 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people who are Muslims.

Moderates most may be, but many worry the war on terror will be used to excuse attacks on Islam in general, and are unhappy at the prospect of a U.S.-led attack on Muslim-majority Iraq.

The latter has already been the subject of several demonstrations at U.S. facilities in Indonesia, including one by around 200 protesters on Tuesday.

Boyce suggested Indonesia might be more comfortable with U.N.- backed action on Iraq than anything seen as unilateral.

When asked whether Jakarta would support an attack on Iraq if the United Nations endorsed it, he said: "I'm not going to comment on where Indonesia is going to be one way or the other, but I will say that Indonesia's practice in the past as a U.N. member has been to abide by U.N. resolutions."

He was reluctant to be drawn on the question of whether a U.S. attack could spark increased anti-American demonstrations or threats of anti-American violence.

"I really don't like to get into hypothetical," he said.,

"There are just too many open-ended issues to get into what the reaction here might be."