Megawati takes spotlight in antiterror drive
Megawati takes spotlight in antiterror drive
Shingo Ito, Agence France-Presse, Los Cabos, Mexico
President Megawati Soekarnoputri, hauled to the frontlines of
the global anti-terror drive by a bombing massacre in Bali,
arrived here on Thursday hoping to convince fellow Asia-Pacific
leaders she is determined to fight extremists.
The bomb blast that tore through a Bali nightclub Oct. 12,
killing at least 191 people, mostly Australians, cast Megawati as
a key Asian key player in the U.S.-led campaign against worldwide
terrorism.
President George W. Bush has scheduled a meeting with her on
Saturday on the sidelines of this weekend's Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) summit after Washington warned she could no
longer pretend terrorism did not exist in her country.
"Right now the signals coming out of Indonesia are fairly
positive," a senior U.S. official said in Washington, commenting
on a wave of anti-terror measures hurriedly unveiled by Jakarta.
"As of right now, I think the message will be one of
encouragement."
Six days after the bombing, Megawati, who leads the world's
most populous Muslim nation, agreed emergency decrees authorizing
the death sentence for some acts of terror.
There are growing suspicions that the regional terror group
Jamaah Islamiyah, thought to be linked to bin Laden's al-Qaeda,
may have had a hand in the Bali bombing.
On Wednesday the U.S. State Department officially designated
Jamaah Islamiyah as a "foreign terrorist organization", and
Britain said Thursday it will add the organization to its list of
banned terrorist groups.
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, a 64-year-old Muslim cleric suspected of
being the spiritual chief of the network, was under police guard
in hospital after collapsing when police summoned him for
questioning a week ago.
At the APEC summit, Megawati was expected to seek financial
support and ask those countries whose citizens make up the bulk
of visitors to Indonesia to lift their warnings against travel.
On Wednesday, Indonesia's Industry and Trade Minister Rini MS
Soewandi sought Japanese support for its battle to recover from
the massacre when she met Japan's vice trade minister Sanae
Takaichi here.
"We want to regain peace and security in Bali through economic
development," Rini told Takaichi.
Anti-terrorism measures swamped the official agenda here.
A hostage drama in Moscow, where Chechen separatists held 700
people at gunpoint in a theater, forced Russian President
Vladimir Putin to cancel his visit to the APEC summit,
underscoring fragile international security.
The hostage-taking and the Oct. 12 bombing on Bali had been
organized by "the same people," Putin said in Moscow. He sent
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov in his place to the APEC summit.
The real test of Indonesia's resolve will be follow-up moves
against hundreds of suspected Jamaah Islamiyah members still in
the country and other radical groups, said Andrew Tan, an analyst
with the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore.
"We have to see how the situation unfolds because the arrest
of Ba'asyir is only the first step," he said.
"He has to be prosecuted and put behind bars," Tan said.
"There are also large numbers of people associated with militants
still running around."