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."