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Bali delegate predicts more attacks

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer talks to journalists during a press conference in Bali yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Additional terrorist attacks are "inevitable" in the Asia-Pacific region -- where terrorists are actively training, recruiting and using "legitimate fronts to pursue barbaric ends," Australia's foreign minister said yesterday at the opening of an anti-terrorism conference on the bomb-scarred tourist island of Bali.

"Terrorist groups are cooperating across the region, transiting borders using one country to train in, another to raise funds in and another for safe haven. They are working together to maximize the impact of their activities," Alexander Downer said.

Combating the al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah topped the agenda at the two-day regional conference attended by ministers and senior officials from 33 countries, including US Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"We have convened here in Bali to deepen our cooperation against those who oppose our shared values and those who would murder innocents," Ashcroft told reporters. "Through the cooperative efforts of countries represented at this ministerial meeting we will win the battle for freedom, we will win the battle for tolerance, we will win the battle to defeat terror."

The countries are expected to bolster cooperation in intelligence gathering and offer new anti-terror aid for developing countries like Indonesia.

It's unlikely they'll sign any comprehensive agreements that would enable them to move beyond the two-way pacts that have damaged Jemaah Islamiyah, but failed to defeat it. Critics say mutual suspicions have prevented the creation of region-wide mechanisms, such as a multinational police force.

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri told the conference delegates that "wider and more effective cooperation" has now become "our common duty."

"This solid coordination mechanism is necessary, for only in this way would we be able to penetrate into the terrorist network and cells that are neatly, tightly and closely built," she said.

Downer announced the opening of a transnational crime center in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Run jointly by Indonesia and Australia, it will offer anti-terror training and be an information clearinghouse.

The center will foster anti-terrorism skills like "forensic training, strike forces, bomb disposal units and training, response training for sabotage and hostage-taking," said Bali's police chief, Inspector-General I Made Mangku Pastika.

Also Wednesday, Indonesia and Australia signed an accord on the exchange of financial intelligence to fight money laundering -- the latest of nine anti-terror agreements signed between the two countries.

Hundreds of police and troops patrolled near the conference at Bali's Grand Hyatt beach resort, with a police ship just off the coast. Bali was the site of the Oct. 12, 2002 twin nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian tourists.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has spawned more terrorists than any other Asian country -- and has been the target of some of their worst attacks.

Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for both the Bali attack and the Aug. 5, 2003 bombing that killed 12 people at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.
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