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Megawatti, right, with Australian
Premier
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JAKARTA,
October 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Indonesia Saturday,
October 26, came under pressure, at a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in
Mexico, to plug security holes and the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was put on
a UN blacklist.
In
Jakarta, police were still unable to question the accused JI spiritual
leader Abu Bakar Bashir, who remained in hospital after collapsing eight
days ago.
The
October 12 Bali attack bore the hallmarks of previous operations by JI,
but no firm link has been established, Indonesian police said, reported
Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
United Nations ruling placed JI on a list of organizations allied to
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, and subject to international
sanctions.
At
a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Mexico, Indonesian President
Megawati Sukarnoputri was pressed to maintain the pace of an anti-terror
campaign launched following the Bali devastation.
"I
put very strongly to President Megawati the need for the strongest
possible measures to be taken against terrorism in Indonesia,"
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.
Howard
offered Megawati 10 million Australian dollars (5.5 million US) to boost
anti-terrorist surveillance and security at airports and customs
services.
Two
months before the Bali attack, Washington pledged 50 million dollars to
help Jakarta battle terrorism.
Terrorism
posed a danger to "the future of our civilization," said
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, in Mexico for President
Vladimir Putin, who stayed in Moscow to oversee a hostage crisis there
that ended in bloodshed Saturday.
Megawati
had been under international fire for months for an alleged perceived
soft approach to so-called extremists, but appeared galvanized into
action by the Bali bombing. No one or group has yet been officially
accused of the bombing, which claimed more than 190 lives, nearly half
of them Australian.
Her
government rushed through emergency powers to deal with terrorists and
pushed the UN to put the JI on its blacklist, which requires UN states
to freeze its assets and prevent the movement of its members.
The
United States and Britain named JI a "foreign terrorist
organization" following the Bali bombings.
In
a separate related development, in a video from bin Laden, aired by the
BBC Saturday, he indicated Australia was on al-Qaeda's hit list for its
role in helping mainly Christian East Timor win independence from
Indonesia, setting back plans for a united Islamic nation.
"The
crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores ... and they landed
on East Timor which is part of the Islamic world," bin Laden said
in the grainy video recorded last November.
No
one has claimed responsibility for the Bali bombing, and Bashir has not
been named as a suspect.
But
he is wanted for questioning over a spate of bombings two years ago,
which killed 18 people, and an alleged plot to kill Megawati before she
became President.
His
wife Aisyah Baraja wrote to police Saturday asking that the 64-year-old
cleric be discharged from hospital to receive ongoing treatment at home
before being questioned by police, Achmad Michdana, a lawyer for Bashir,
told AFP.
"We
are planning to present Bashir for police questioning on Tuesday or
Wednesday, October 29 or 30, if his health fully recovers by then and if
his doctors allow him to do so," Michdan said.
Ros
Edi Ariswati, the head of the Muhammadiyah hospital in Solo, Central
Java, said Bashir "still requires a few (more) days of
hospitalization".
Bashir
has denied all links to terrorism.
