Word: megawati
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Until now, fear of a devastating domestic backlash has restrained Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri from cracking down on her nation's increasingly vocal and active supporters of Osama bin Laden. Now, she may have no choice but to bite the bullet. The weekend bomb blast in Bali that killed 189, mostly foreign revelers at two local nightclubs could force Megawati to choose between Washington and the mainstream Muslim political parties on whose support she has been partly dependent...
...Bush administration officials have left no doubt that Megawati's hour of decision has arrived. "I hope I hear the resolve of a leader that recognizes that any time terrorists take hold in the country, it's going to weaken the country itself," President Bush said Tuesday of his planned talks with his Indonesian counterpart. Secretary of State Colin Powell was even more pointed: "We can see now that you are not exempt from this, you cannot pretend it does not exist in your country," said Powell, reflecting longstanding U.S. frustration over what Washington sees has been Jakarta's denial...
...officials also helpfully (for Megawati) referred repeatedly to al-Qaeda, and the idea that foreign terrorists were using Indonesia as a safe haven - a line enthusiastically embraced by some Indonesian officials, and certainly helped by forensic evidence suggesting the blast had been caused by sophisticated C4 plastic explosive, suggesting the perpetrators had international links. Still, the problem for the Indonesian president is that her country's radical Islamist movement is mostly homegrown, despite strong links with al-Qaeda to the highest level...
...Extremist currents remain on the fringes of Indonesian Islam, but they appear to have been tolerated by a mainstream increasingly suspicious of U.S. intentions - an inclination shared by many Indonesian nationalists long hostile to agendas emanating from Washington. Megawati, like every Indonesian leader since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, has a tenuous grip on power maintained through balancing the interests of rival political parties and the military. That has left her reluctant to engage in a battle that might turn even moderate Muslims against...
...Bali, he explains. There have been rare tribal disputes in the past, but nobody has ever targeted foreigners. A tragedy like this, explains Ketut, will be devastating for the tourism industry in Bali and the rest of Indonesia. "We are going into bankrupcy," said Ketut. For Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, already facing criticism for not pulling her weight in the war on terror, the attacks reveal the horrible human cost of delaying a crackdown on domestic terrorism...