Asia, Australia plan to beef up security on New Year's Eve

SYDNEY, Australia -- After a year marred by terror attacks and other violence, countries across the Asia-Pacific region are beefing up security to safeguard New Year's Eve celebrations even as they urge revelers to turn out to mark the start of 2003.

In Australia, the government says it has received a "credible" warning of a terror strike sometime soon. Police will be deployed around Sydney's harbor so a huge fireworks display can go ahead and revelers can party without fear.

"If no one went out ... the terrorists would have won without doing anything," said Dick Adams, assistant police commissioner in New South Wales state. "Don't be a hostage in your own home."

Like many countries in neighboring Asia, Australia has been on heightened alert since Oct. 12, when bombs tore through two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 192 -- mostly Western vacationers, many of them Australians.

The blasts are blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian Islamic group linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

Defiant move

In a defiant move, official celebrations in Indonesia will be hosted by President Megawati Sukarnoputri on Bali. Overall, more than 200,000 security personnel will be on duty across the world's most populous Islamic nation.

Police will close off key roads in the capital, Jakarta. Revelers will be watched by bomb squad officers and armed officers, said the city's police chief, Maj. Gen. Makbul Padmanegara.

Authorities in the Philippines are on high alert for possible attacks by Muslim and communist rebels. A spate of bombings last week killed at 30 people in its volatile south, home to a restive Muslim minority and several rebel groups.

All leave has been canceled for the nation's 114,000-strong police force. In the capital, Manila, where 15,000 police will be on duty, armed personnel have increased their presence in popular tourist areas and around hotels and diplomatic quarters.

"There is no specific threat. There is no confirmed threat. But in our planning we always expect the worst and hope for the best," said national police spokesman Senior Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil.

Most New Year's Eve parties -- frowned upon by strict Muslims as decadent and Western -- will be held in private homes, often protected by armed guards.

In the violent southern port city of Karachi, celebrations are banned in hotels and clubs. But police will not stop the city's young people from congregating along the Arabian Sea shore to see in the new year, as is the tradition. Police say they have a special security plan in place.

"Everybody should have a right to live his own life," said Abdul Latif, 23, a student in Karachi. "There should be no ban on celebrating New Year's Eve."

In May, a powerful bomb ripped through Karachi's Sheraton Hotel, killing 11 French engineers, and four Pakistanis, including the suicide bomber. Since then, 5-star hotels frequented by foreigners have blocked entrances with cement barricades and employed armed guards.

In Malaysia, where authorities have cracked down on suspected Islamic extremists in recent months, paramilitary police will be stationed alongside regular patrol officers at sites of major New Year's Eve celebrations, said Inspector Jasman Junaidi, a police spokesman.

In Thailand, the National Security Council has issued a nationwide terrorist alert over the New Year holidays and will offer special protection to some 20,000 boy and girl scouts from 80 countries gathering for a world jamboree.

A ring of added security will surround two of Singapore's largest parties, which expect to draw about 30,000 revelers to the tourist island of Sentosa and the Singapore Expo conference center.