Indonesia, Singapore cooperate to fight international terrorism
Indonesia, Singapore cooperate to fight international terrorism
Agence France-Presse, Jakarta
Singapore will work closely with neighboring Indonesia to combat international terrorism, visiting Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan said here Thursday.
Tan, who is also coordinating minister for security and defense, was speaking after a meeting with Indonesia's senior security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"Terrorism is a menace and terrorism today is international," Tan told reporters.
"It is not possible for any one country to combat this menace and we have to cooperate together."
Earlier Thursday the Singapore government announced two more Singaporeans had been arrested for being part of the al-Qaeda -linked Jamaah Islamiyah (JI). This brings to 35 the number detained in the city state for alleged JI links.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told AFP in Singapore that the crackdown on JI had effectively routed the group there.
"With the arrests that we have made in Singapore we believe we have been able to cripple severely the capability and the ability of extremist organizations to mount terrorist attacks. But it does not mean that this menace has been eradicated," Tan said.
"The two detainees are a manifestation of how dangerous the threat of the Jamaah Islamiyah and terrorism still is in Singapore. We should be under no illusion that JI has been eliminated."
He said Singapore had to be continuously on guard for "new leaders, younger leaders" that are being groomed by JI.
The minister also said any terror attack in Indonesia was bad for Singapore.
"It presents the wrong image of the region to the whole world. That is why we cooperate closely together ... in order to remove this menace which threatens all our societies and economies."
Indonesia has arrested scores of JI suspects since the October 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people but remains on top alert for attacks, especially over Christmas.
Susilo praised excellent intelligence and police cooperation between Indonesia and Singapore and said Indonesia would like to see its regional neighbors holding joint military and police training exercises in the archipelago.
Tan is due to meet President Megawati Soekarnoputri on Friday.