Singapore says Bali blasts to hit region's economy

Singapore says Bali blasts to hit region's economy

Richard Hubbard Reuters Singapore

The bomb blasts in Bali over the weekend were likely to hurt an already fragile economic outlook in Southeast Asia and hit foreign investment, Singapore's Minister of Defence Tony Tan said on Monday.

Tan, who is one of Singapore's two deputy prime ministers, also called on Southeast Asian nations to work more closely together and take steps to prevent any future attacks.

"The economic climate is already difficult. On top of this, we now have security worries," Tan said.

"Having such a terrorist attack in this part of the world is not going to create confidence in investors. Security and law and order are fundamental concerns," he told a news conference.

Singapore, he said, condemned the bombings that ripped through packed Bali nightspots on Saturday night, killing at least 183 people, mostly foreigners.

There have been no publicised claims of responsibility or announced clues pointing to the perpetrators, but some fingers have been pointed at Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for last year's September 11 attacks on the United States.

"The region as whole must get its act together and provide the type of secure environment foreign investors need before they will put any money in," he said.

In Singapore, the economy was still likely to make the bottom of the government's forecast for growth for this year of three to four percent, he said.

"The big issue is what is going to happen in 2003 if there is an attack on Iraq, oil prices go up, if the strike in the West Coast ports is not settled, if there are more terrorist attacks in this part of the world."

"2003 is going to be a very difficult year," Tan said.

Singapore was actively cooperating with neighbouring Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines on sharing intelligence gleaned from its own detention of 31 men on suspicion of planning a bombing campaign in the city state.

"We still have to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the attacks."

But he said there was a need to disrupt plots long before they are hatched.

"You cannot sit back and wait until these terrorists can accumulate the necessary material to fix their bombs and to launch them."

Singapore, a close ally of Washington and host to a U.S. naval logistics base along with numerous American corporations, has said it believes Jemaah Islamiah has links to al Qaeda.

"We have made public our views. We believe that there is a network in this part of the world, the Jemaah Islamiah, which is a terrorist network, whose leaders (include) Hambali who is somewhere, we believe, in Indonesia," Tan said.

"We've also openly stated our view that Abu Bakar Bashir is a leader of the network. This is not new news. It's something we have stated before and we stand by what we have stated."

In Jogjakarta, Indonesia on Monday, Bashir, a Muslim cleric who runs an Islamic boarding school, said he had heard reports he might be arrested and called the Bali blasts "a brutal act". He has consistently denied any links with terrorism or Jemaah.