KUALA LUMPUR, November 7 (IslamOnline) - Thailand denied a report in the Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ) which claimed Thursday, November 7, that Al-Qaeda’s top South-east Asian operative, Riduan Isamuddin Alias Hambali, earlier this year planned last month's Bali bombing from locations in southern Thailand.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra dismissed the report, saying it was not based on facts, defending his country’s intelligentsia in the process.

His denial of the report also indicates that Thailand is not ready to accept that separatists in Patani, a southern province, are linked to the Al-Qaeda as suggested by the newspaper.

Confusion and an attempt to blame the Bali bombing on Muslims are running high among Western-owned media and intelligence, a member of the Indonesian Mujahideen Movement (MMI) told IslamOnline in response to the article published in the Wall Street Journal and carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“They are plotting everything against Muslims to the extent that such accusations are being made against Mujahideens knowing they cannot reply since they are in hiding from injustices,” Abdullah Ahmad said.

According to the Hong Kong based newspaper, Asian intelligence officials believe that Riduan, an Indonesian Islamic militant, urged Arab and South-east Asian militants attending a January meeting to attack nightclubs and restaurants in the region.

The paper did not reveal the source of its information and did not produce any factual evidence to support its assertions, the MMI member said.

“Likewise the accusations by a U.S. official that Al-Qaeda is threatening to undermine Indonesian democracy is a fallacy and is not supported by any factual evidence,” he added.

United States Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Indonesia to stop pretending that it does not have a terrorist problem, claiming in an interview with CNN that Al-Qaeda's prime target was Indonesian democracy.

He acknowledged in an interview Tuesday, November 5, that Jakarta was now more serious and focused about the problem since the October 12 Bali bombings.

But he added: "I still think there are far too many Indonesians who haven't quite heard the call yet. In many ways, the prime target is Indonesian democracy."

His comments are bound to create havoc in Indonesia, where politicians and observers are yet to react.

His comments could also create further tension between the U.S. and Indonesia, an observer said late Thursday.

IslamOnline learned that the allegations made against the Mujahideen leader in hiding came from Singaporean intelligence and the information was passed to Thailand authorities to search for Hambali in Patani.

Malaysia attempted to arrest Hambali in November last year, but sources said he had a narrow escape, crossing the border between Malaysia and Indonesia hours before he was to be arrested.

Hambali is next, after Abu-Bakar Bashyir, the arrested leader in Indonesia, on the list of terror suspects being sought by the U.S. after the September 11 attacks.

The most recent information on Hambali said he was spotted in Samarang, Indonesia, but Indonesian police and intelligence denied he was in Indonesia.

However, sources close to the MMI said Hambali, who is of mixed Malay-Indian origin left Malaysia for Indonesia and Afghanistan at the height of the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan in November last year.

Still according to the AWSJ, the plan to bomb Bali was put in place at a safe house near the Malaysian border after an alleged plot to bomb American, Israeli and other targets in Singapore was foiled in late 2001.

"We know that he is alive and he is always on the move," a senior Asian security official was quoted by AWSJ as saying.

"He doesn't spend more than one night in a single place," the official added.

Thai authorities are urging Malay police to assist them in capturing 35 "separatists" from Thailand who had escaped to Malaysia.

Most of them are said to hold double nationality, Malay and Thai.

South-east Asian intelligence officials describe Hambali as the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), an Islamic network that operates across the region and is suspected of being behind the October 12 blast in Bali.

Wolfowitz, called a Jew by the MMI members to whom IslamOnline spoke, claimed Al-Qaeda wanted to wreck Indonesian democracy, turning the country into the worst kind of Islamic state with rampant poverty.

He said that while Al-Qaeda would have a long way to go to achieve such an aim, he alleged it was "prepared to kill hundreds of thousands of people to try to achieve that goal."