Indonesia steps up security after US warning

JAKARTA - Indonesia stepped up security at a shopping mall in the capital after the US embassy warned of a possible bomb threat, a spokesman for the complex said.

The embassy warned of the threat at the World Trade Center Mangga Dua in northern Jakarta between March 11 and 14 in a terse statement posted on its website and circulated to Americans in Indonesia on Friday.

It gave no details on the information that led to the statement or who might be behind the threat. Australia issued a similar warning on Saturday, asking its citizens to avoid areas surrounding the shopping mall.

"We have elevated our security level and alertness. We also have reinforcement from security personnel," Budi Santosa, general affairs manager at the complex, told Reuters Television.

"We cannot afford to take this lightly," he added.

The complex, which opened last year, is one of some half a dozen shopping malls in the area, one of the busiest for retail and wholesale trading in Jakarta, a sprawling city of some 10 million people.

Another spokesman said 100 policemen had arrived at the mall to reinforce a similar number of internal security personnel.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has been hit by several bomb attacks in recent years blamed on Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda.

The deadliest, on nightclubs in the resort island of Bali in 2002, killed 202 people, many of them Australians. The most recent, last September against the Australian embassy in Jakarta, killed 10.

Jemaah Islamiah, which has been called the Southeast Asian arm of al Qaeda, is blamed for both attacks.

An estimated 85 per cent of Indonesia's 220 million people are Muslims, the vast majority of them moderates.

The US embassy has issued a number of warnings about possible bombings and other threats in Indonesia since the World Trade Center attacks in New York in 2001, including a still-standing caution to Americans to avoid such places as hotels, nightclubs and shopping areas popular with Westerners.

- REUTERS