SE Asia still vulnerable to suicide attacks: Lee
SE Asia still vulnerable to suicide attacks: Lee
Agence France-Presse,Singapore
Southeast Asia remains vulnerable to suicide attacks by
"hundreds" of operatives of the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) extremist
group despite the arrests of several members, Singapore's elder
statesman Lee Kuan Yew said on Friday.
Senior Minister Lee told a conference of Asia-Pacific defense
ministers that the United States and its western allies must
defeat Islamic militancy in the Arab world by military, economic
and other means in order to remove a source of Islamic radicalism
in Southeast Asia.
He said the JI has "paid a price" for mounting terrorist
strikes in the region such as the bomb attack on the Indonesian
resort island of Bali last year, in which 202 people from 21
countries were killed.
About 30 of the perpetrators of the Bali bombings and their
accomplices have been arrested with technical help from the
American Federal Bureau of Investigation and Australian Federal
Police.
"But there are hundreds more still in the region who will
regroup and in good time can execute more suicide attacks," Lee
told the ministers and armed forces chiefs attending the two-day
Asia Security Conference starting Saturday.
Lee, Singapore's founding father and former prime minister,
said regional affiliates of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network
such as the JI "will certainly try to attack soft targets in
Southeast Asia" as their allies have done in Riyadh on May 13 and
Morocco three days later.
"The source of Islamic militancy among Muslims in Southeast
Asia has been the increasing fanaticism of extremist Muslims in
the Arab world that has been exported by Arab extremists to
previously moderate Muslims in Southeast Asia," he said.
"This Islamic militancy has taken on a life and dynamic of its
own," he said.
To halt this trend, a peace agreement between the Israelis and
the Palestinians "is a necessary but not a sufficient condition."
An end to the conflict will deprive extremists of a rallying
point, "but unless militant groups in the Arab countries and
Islamic theocracies are seen to fail, JI and other militant
groups in the non-Arab Muslim world will continue to recruit
extremists," he said.