Indonesia pledges crackdown on terror after Bali bombing

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Accused of having ignored demands to crack down on terrorism, Indonesia pledged Wednesday to press ahead with tough new security laws and formed an international investigative team to hunt for the culprits in the Bali nightclub bombing.

Police in Bali said they had detained two Indonesian men for further questioning after an initial round of interrogation. They are a security guard and the brother of a man whose ID card was found at the blast scene.

The Jakarta Post reported Thursday that the investigation was focusing on seven foreigners who apparently arrived in Indonesia two days before the attack. Citing intelligence sources, the paper said the suspects included a Yemeni and a Malaysian.

U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce said a man who allegedly tried to hurl a small bomb at the office of the honorary U.S. consul in Bali's capital of Denpasar on Saturday had been injured when the device exploded prematurely. He said the man was assumed to be under arrest, but police spokesmen denied anyone was detained after that explosion.

Boyce disclosed that in the month before the Bali attack, he and other American envoys had discussed with Indonesian officials possible attacks against U.S. targets.

But he said the warnings were not specific to Indonesia. They coincided with a temporary closure of embassies in Jakarta and other regional capitals due to terrorist threats during the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even as the government in Jakarta vowed to fight terrorism more aggressively, the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah denied the group existed in Indonesia or anywhere else, or that al-Qaida was tied to the attack which killed at least 183 people, most of them foreign tourists, and injured hundreds more.

"There is no link between al-Qaida and the bomb blast," Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir told reporters, calling the accusations "the invention of infidels."

The Indonesian government is struggling to shake off its image of having ignored months of warnings about terrorists being active here, particularly Jemaah Islamiyah, which wants to establish a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said Wednesday that the government was working on enacting tougher anti-terrorism legislation -- stalled in Parliament for months -- by presidential decree.

But President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is perceived as indecisive and aloof, has made no attempt to marshal opinion against terrorism and has barely been seen in public since making a brief, tearful trip to the bomb site Sunday.