'Indonesia must initiate anti-terror drive'

The policy statements coming from the United States amounts to "unilateralism" in the ears of many outside the country. Former defense minister Juwono Sudarsono shared his thoughts on the issue with The Jakarta Post.

Question: What are your thoughts on President George W. Bush's current unilateral foreign policy?

Answer: President Bush is riding high in the polls at home since Sept. 11 and the successful military campaign in Afghanistan, averaging 80 percent approval ratings. He has just got Congressional support for a US$2.3 trillion defense budget for the next five years. He wants to carry this momentum well over to the presidential elections in 2004.

The big question is whether he can carry this stance long enough to overcome possible hurdles in the U.S. economy. American public opinion is behind him now, but whether this unilateralism -- in speechmaking if not always in the nuances of actual policy -- can be sustained throughout the next two years is an open question.

Q: Critics have said that the U.S. hard-line on anti-terrorism in Southeast Asia will create more problems than resolve them. What do you have to say?

A: Governments of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have exchanged intelligence about region-based terrorist groups since the mid-1970s and especially after 1993. September 11 heightened the concern over global terrorism, compounded by high profile media reports about U.S. demands for a world-wide concerted effort.

The more relevant issues are: First, pinning down incontrovertible legal evidence of terrorist activities -- the planning, financing, abetting, executing of terrorist acts by individuals or groups in Southeast Asia that are manipulating perverted Islamic precepts "linked to" or "associated with" (suspected terrorist) Osama bin Landen and his cohorts.

Secondly, defining and delivering appropriate responses so that governmental action will be perceived as being fair, accurate and measured, not based on a knee-jerk stance easily misperceived to be against the interests of the larger Muslim community.

This has nothing to do with whether a country has internal security acts or not; it is a simple matter of political acumen. Third -- and most important in the case of Indonesia -- any American assistance should be carefully calibrated so that the scope of anti-terrorist policies and actions should first and foremost be an Indonesian government initiative rather than perceived as being conducted at the behest of American pressure.

Recent agency reports that U.S. intelligence plans to initiate a campaign to slant international media coverage in favor of U.S. policy can only work against the interests of the government assisted, as well as against the interests of American foreign policy in the long-term. It would be unfortunate if the U.S. Safe Harbor Act, for example, be held against Indonesia "for not being cooperative enough." Nothing could be further from the truth.

Indonesian authorities have questioned and arrested several suspected terrorists and there are any number of moderate Indonesian Muslims, including those in the Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (largest Indonesian Muslim organizations) who openly oppose groups who hijack and manipulate Islamic precepts to justify violent and radical change, Al Qaeda or no Al Qaeda.

Q: What about the response of Indonesian officials to the comments of Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew recently?

A: If you read Lee Kuan Yew's comments in context, there really was no need to react in the way some Indonesian officials have done. Lee was concerned about reported Al Qaeda cell operatives in Southeast Asia being "loose around" in Indonesia and endangering the security of Singapore. In my reading, Lee was not being provocative.

Rather, Indonesian officials and media made it out to be provocative. If they had been consistent, they should have protested (U.S. Ambassador to Singapore) Frank Lavin's comments the week before when he claimed the Indonesian government was not doing enough in the campaign against international terrorism. Or the Singapore Straits Times report from Jakarta about an "intelligence finding" on the triangular link of terrorist Islamic groups working together in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in October last year.

In any case, time will tell whether Lee Kuan Yew's voiced concern was right or whether the Indonesian government's response was the more appropriate.