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Indonesia warns of terror attacks

* British embassy evacuated in package alert

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s president warned on Monday of possible terrorist attacks in the coming two months, and said he would also take steps to show the country was still a tolerant Muslim nation.

Speaking at a seminar in Jakarta, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said bombmakers from the militant network Jemaah Islamiah posed a threat to the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

“Terrorist cells are still active. They are still hiding, recruiting, networking, trying to find new funding sources, and even planning,” Yudhoyono said.

“Entering September and October, these are special months for terrorism. There will be an increase of terrorist activities in the region,” he said.

Yudhoyono did not elaborate, but Jemaah Islamiah, seen as Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian arm, has carried out one big bombing in Indonesia each year for the past few years. All of the blasts occurred between August and October.

His comments coincided with the evacuation of the heavily fortified British embassy in Jakarta after a suspicious item was mailed to the mission. Police said it was only a personal package that contained a disc player and biscuits.

Police have blamed Jemaah Islamiah for a suicide bomb attack outside the Australian embassy last September that killed 10 people. It was also responsible for the Bali nightclub bombings in October 2002 that killed 202 people.

Some security experts have said that despite the arrest of a number of its senior operatives, Jemaah Islamiah still has the capability to conduct one large bombing a year in Indonesia.

The president, a secular former general, said he also wanted to reverse any perceptions that Islam in Indonesia was becoming more hardline.

“You may read from time to time the voice of small radical groups. But this voice will not change the fact that mainstream Indonesia will continue to be moderate, tolerant and democratic,” Yudhoyono said.

“We will strengthen the hands of the religious moderates,” he added. He did not say how he would do this, but Indonesia’s image as a moderate Muslim nation has taken some hits in recent months. In late July, Indonesia’s top Islamic council issued a religious edict forbidding pluralism, any liberal interpretation of Islam as well as mixed marriages.

That legally non-binding fatwa by the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) was heavily criticised by many moderate clerics.

Muslim hardliners in parts of the country have also recently forced the closure of several churches, claiming they did not have licences to operate. Police have taken no action. And in a blow for mainstream clerics, the country’s most respected moderate Muslim intellectual, Nurcholish Madjid, died on Monday, family members told El Shinta news station. reuters

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